THE TIME MACHINE

The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite
matter to us. His grey eyes shone and twinkled, and his usually pale face was flushed and
animated. The fire burned brightly, and the soft radiance of the incandescent lights in the
lilies of silver caught the bubbles that flashed and passed in our glasses. Our chairs, being
his patents, embraced and caressed us rather than submitted to be sat upon, and there was
that luxurious after-dinner atmosphere when thought roams gracefully free of the trammels
of precision. And he put it to us in this way, marking the points with a lean forefinger, as we
sat and lazily admired his earnestness over this new paradox (as we thought it) and his
fecundity.

"You must follow me carefully. I shall have to controvert one or two ideas that are almost
universally accepted. The geometry, for instance, they taught you at school is founded on a
misconception."

"Is not that rather a large thing to expect us to begin upon?" said Filby, an argumentative
person with red hair.

"I do not mean to ask you to accept anything without reasonable ground for it. You will soon
admit as much as I need from you. You know of course that a mathematical line, a line of
thickness nil, has no real existence. They taught you that? Neither has a mathematical
plane. These things are mere abstractions."

"That is all right," said the Psychologist.

"Nor, having only length, breadth, and thickness, can a cube have a real existence."

"There I object," said Filby. "Of course a solid body may exist. All real things-"

"So most people think. But wait a moment. Can an instantaneous cube exist?"

"Don't follow you," said Filby.

"Can a cube that does not last for any time at all, have a real existence?"

Filby became pensive. "Clearly," the Time Traveller proceeded, "any real body must have
extension in four directions: it must have Length, Breadth, Thickness, and
Duration. But through a natural infirmity of the flesh, which I will explain to you in a
moment, we incline to overlook this fact. There are really four dimensions, three which we
call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time. There is, however, a tendency to draw an
unreal distinction between the former three dimensions and the latter, because it happens
that our consciousness moves intermittently in one direction along the latter from the
beginning to the end of our lives."

"That," said a very young man, making spasmodic efforts to relight his cigar over the lamp;
"that . . . very clear indeed."

"Now, it is very remarkable that this is so extensively overlooked," continued the Time
Traveller, with a slight accession of cheerfulness. "Really this is what is meant by the Fourth
Dimension, though some people who talk about the Fourth Dimension do not know they
mean it. It is only another way of looking at Time. There is no difference between Time
and any of the three dimensions of Space except that our consciousness moves
along it. But some foolish people have got hold of the wrong side of that idea. You have all
heard what they have to say about this Fourth Dimension?"

"I have not," said the Provincial Mayor.

"It is simply this. That Space, as our mathematicians have it, is spoken of as having three
dimensions, which one may call Length, Breadth, and Thickness, and is always definable by
reference to three planes, each at right angles to the others. But some philosophical people
have been asking why three dimensions particularly why not another direction at right
angles to the other three? and have even tried to construct a Four-Dimension geometry.
Professor Simon Newcomb was expounding this to the New York Mathematical Society only
a month or so ago. You know how on a flat surface, which has only two dimensions, we can
represent a figure of a three-dimensional solid, and similarly they think that by models of
three dimensions they could represent one of four if they could master the perspective of
the thing. See?"

"I think so," murmured the Provincial Mayor; and, knitting his brows, he lapsed into an
introspective state, his lips moving as one who repeats mystic words. "Yes, I think I see it
now," he said after some time, brightening in a quite transitory manner.

"Well, I do not mind telling you I have been at work upon this geometry of Four Dimensions
for some time. Some of my results are curious. For instance, here is a portrait of a man at
eight years old, another at fifteen, another at seventeen, another at twenty-three, and so
on. All these are evidently sections, as it were, Three-Dimensional representations of his
Four-Dimensioned being, which is a fixed and unalterable thing."

"Scientific people," proceeded the Time Traveller, after the pause required for the proper
assimilation of this, "know very well that Time is only a kind of Space. Here is a popular
scientific diagram, a weather record. This line I trace with my finger shows the movement of
the barometer. Yesterday it was so high, yesterday night it fell, then this morning it rose
again, and so gently upward to here. Surely the mercury did not trace this line in any of the
dimensions of Space generally recognized? But certainly it traced such a line, and that line,
therefore, we must conclude was along the Time-Dimension."

"But," said the Medical Man, staring hard at a coal in the fire, "if Time is really only a fourth
dimension of Space, why is it, and why has it always been, regarded as something
different? And why cannot we move in Time as we move about in the other dimensions of
Space?"

The Time Traveller smiled. "Are you sure we can move freely in Space? Right and left we
can go, backward and forward freely enough, and men always have done so. I admit we
move freely in two dimensions. But how about up and down? Gravitation limits us there."

"Not exactly," said the Medical Man. "There are balloons."

"But before the balloons, save for spasmodic jumping and the inequalities of the surface,
man had no freedom of vertical movement."

"Still they could move a little up and down," said the Medical Man.

"Easier, far easier down than up."

"And you cannot move at all in Time, you cannot get away from the present moment."

"My dear sir, that is just where you are wrong. That is just where the whole world has gone
wrong. We are always getting away from the present movement. Our mental existences,
which are immaterial and have no dimensions, are passing along the Time-
Dimension with a uniform velocity from the cradle to the grave. Just as we should
travel down if we began our existence fifty miles above the earth's surface."

"But the great difficulty is this," interrupted the Psychologist. "You can move about in all
directions of Space, but you cannot move about in Time."

"That is the germ of my great discovery. But you are wrong to say that we cannot move
about in Time. For instance, if I am recalling an incident very vividly I go back to the instant
of its occurrence: I become absent-minded, as you say. I jump back for a moment. Of
course we have no means of staying back for any length of Time, any more than a savage
or an animal has of staying six feet above the ground. But a civilized man is better off than
the savage in this respect. He can go up against gravitation in a balloon, and why should he
not hope that ultimately he may be able to stop or accelerate his drift along the Time-
Dimension, or even turn about and travel the other way?"

"Oh, this," began Filby, "is all-"

"Why not?" said the Time Traveller.

"It's against reason," said Filby.

"What reason?" said the Time Traveller.

"You can show black is white by argument," said Filby, "but you will never convince me."

"Possibly not," said the Time Traveller. "But now you begin to see the object of my
investigations into the geometry of Four Dimensions. Long ago I had a vague inkling of a
machine-"

"To travel through Time!" exclaimed the Very Young Man.

"That shall travel indifferently in any direction of Space and Time, as the driver determines."

Filby contented himself with laughter.

"But I have experimental verification," said the Time Traveller.

"It would be remarkably convenient for the historian," the Psychologist suggested. "One
might travel back and verify the accepted account of the Battle of Hastings, for instance!"

"Don't you think you would attract attention?" said the Medical Man. "Our ancestors had no
great tolerance for anachronisms."

"One might get one's Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato," the Very Young Man
thought.

"In which case they would certainly plough you for the Littlego. The German scholars have
improved Greek so much.

"Then there is the future," said the Very Young Man. "Just think! One might invest all one's
money, leave it to accumulate at interest, and hurry on ahead!"

"To discover a society," said I, "erected on a strictly communistic basis."

"Of all the wild extravagant theories!" began the Psychologist.

"Yes, so it seemed to me, and so I never talked of it until-"

"Experimental verification!" cried I. "You are going to verify That!"

"The experiment!" cried Filby, who was getting brain-weary.

"Let's see your experiment anyhow," said the Psychologist, "though it's all humbug, you
know."

The Time Traveller smiled round at us. Then, still smiling faintly, and with his hands deep in
his trousers pockets, he walked slowly out of the room, and we heard his slippers shuffling
down the long passage to his laboratory.

The Psychologist looked at us. "I wonder what he's got?"

"Some sleight-of-hand trick or other," said the Medical Man, and Filby tried to tell us about
a conjurer he had seen at Burslem, but before he had finished his preface the Time Traveller
came back, and Filby's anecdote collapsed.

The thing the Time Traveller held in his hand was a glittering metallic framework, scarcely
larger than a small clock, and very delicately made. There was ivory in it, and some
transparent crystalline substance. And now I must be explicit, for this that follows, unless
his explanation is to be accepted, is an absolutely unaccountable thing. He took one of the
small octagonal tables that were scattered about the room, and set it in front of the fire,
with two legs on the hearth rug. On this table he placed the mechanism. Then he drew up a
chair, and sat down. The only other object on the table was a small shaded lamp, the bright
light of which fell upon the model. There were also perhaps a dozen candles about, two in
brass candlesticks upon the mantel and several in sconces, so that the room was brilliantly
illuminated. I sat in a low arm-chair nearest the fire, and I drew this forward so as to be
almost between the Time Traveller and the fireplace. Filby sat behind him, looking over his
shoulder. The Medical Man and the Provincial Mayor watched him in profile from the right,
the Psychologist from the left. The Very Young Man stood behind the Psychologist. We were
all on the alert. It appears incredible to me that any kind of trick, however subtly conceived
and however adroitly done, could have been played upon us under these conditions.

The Time Traveller looked at us, and then at the mechanism. "Well?" said the Psychologist.

"This little affair," said the Time Traveller, resting his elbows upon the table and pressing his
hands together above the apparatus, "is only a model. It is my plan for a machine to travel
through time. You will notice that it looks singularly askew, and that there is an odd
twinkling appearance about this bar, as though it was in some way unreal." He pointed to
the part with his finger. "Also, here is one little white lever, and here is another."

The Medical Man got up out of his chair and peered into the thing. "It's beautifully made,"
he said.

"It took two years to make," retorted the Time Traveller. Then, when we had all imitated
the action of the Medical Man, he said: "Now I want you clearly to understand that this
lever, being pressed over, sends the machine gliding into the future, and this other reverses
the motion. This saddle represents the seat of a time traveller. Presently I am going to
press the lever, and off the machine will go. It will vanish, pass into future Time, and
disappear. Have a good look at the thing. Look at the table too, and satisfy yourselves there
is no trickery. I don't want to waste this model, and then be told I'm a quack."

There was a minute's pause perhaps. The Psychologist seemed about to speak to me, but
changed his mind. Then the Time Traveller put forth his finger towards the lever. "No," he
said suddenly. "Lend me your hand." And turning to the Psychologist, he took that
individual's hand in his own and told him to put out his forefinger. So that it was the
Psychologist himself who sent forth the model Time Machine on its interminable voyage. We
all saw the lever turn. I am absolutely certain there was no trickery. There was a breath of
wind, and the lamp flame jumped. One of the candles on the mantel was blown out, and the
little machine suddenly swung round, became indistinct, was seen as a ghost for a second
perhaps, as an eddy of faintly glittering brass and ivory; and it was gone, vanished! Save
for the lamp the table was bare.

Everyone was silent for a minute. Then Filby said he was damned.

The Psychologist recovered from his stupor, and suddenly looked under the table. At that
the Time Traveller laughed cheerfully. "Well?" he said, with a reminiscence of the
Psychologist. Then, getting up, he went to the tobacco jar on the mantel, and with his back
to us began to fill his pipe.

We stared at each other. "Look here," said the Medical Man, "are you in earnest about this?
Do you seriously believe that that machine has travelled into time?"

"Certainly," said the Time Traveller, stooping to light a spill at the fire. Then he turned,
lighting his pipe, to look at the Psychologist's face. (The Psychologist, to show that he was
not unhinged, helped himself to a cigar and tried to light it uncut.) "What is more, I have a
big machine nearly finished in there" he indicated the laboratory "and when that is put
together I mean to have a journey on my own account."

"You mean to say that that machine has travelled into the future?" said Filby.

"Into the future or the past I don't, for certain, know which."

After an interval the Psychologist had an inspiration. "It must have gone into the past if it
has gone anywhere," he said.

"Why?" said the Time Traveller.

"Because I presume that it has not moved in space, and if it travelled into the future it
would still be here all this time, since it must have travelled through this time."

"But," I said, "If it travelled into the past it would have been visible when we came first into
this room; and last Thursday when we were here; and the Thursday before that; and so
forth!"
"Serious objections," remarked the Provincial Mayor, with an air of impartiality, turning
towards the Time Traveller.

"Not a bit," said the Time Traveller, and, to the Psychologist: "You think. You can explain
that. It's presentation below the threshold, you know, diluted presentation."

"Of course," said the Psychologist, and reassured us. "That's a simple point of psychology. I
should have thought of it. It's plain enough, and helps the paradox delightfully. We cannot
see it, nor can we appreciate this machine, any more than we can the spoke of a wheel
spinning, or a bullet flying through the air. If it is travelling through time fifty times or a
hundred times faster than we are, if it gets through a minute while we get through a
second, the impression it creates will of course be only one-fiftieth or one-hundredth of
what it would make if it were not travelling in time. That's plain enough." He passed his
hand through the space in which the machine had been. "You see?" he said, laughing.

We sat and stared at the vacant table for a minute or so. Then the Time Traveller asked us
what we thought of it all.

"It sounds plausible enough to-night," said the Medical Man; "but wait until to-morrow. Wait
for the common sense of the morning."

"Would you like to see the Time Machine itself?" asked the Time Traveller. And therewith,
taking the lamp in his hand, he led the way down the long, draughty corridor to his
laboratory. I remember vividly the flickering light, his queer, broad head in silhouette, the
dance of the shadows, how we all followed him, puzzled but incredulous, and how there in
the laboratory we beheld a larger edition of the little mechanism which we had seen vanish
from before our eyes. Parts were of nickel, parts of ivory, parts had certainly been filed or
sawn out of rock crystal. The thing was generally complete, but the twisted crystalline bars
lay unfinished upon the bench beside some sheets of drawings, and I took one up for a
better look at it. Quartz it seemed to be.

"Look here," said the Medical Man, "are you perfectly serious? Or is this a trick like that
ghost you showed us last Christmas?"

"Upon that machine," said the Time Traveller, holding the lamp aloft, "I intend to explore
time. Is that plain? I was never more serious in my life."

None of us quite knew how to take it.

I caught Filby's eye over the shoulder of the Medical Man, and he winked at me solemnly.

II

I think that at that time none of us quite believed in the Time Machine. The fact is, the Time
Traveller was one of those men who are too clever to be believed: you never felt that you
saw all round him; you always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush,
behind his lucid frankness. Had Filby shown the model and explained the matter in the Time
Traveller's words, we should have shown him far less scepticism. For we should have
perceived his motives; a pork-butcher could understand Filby. But the Time Traveller had
more than a touch of whim among his elements, and we distrusted him. Things that would
have made the frame of a less clever man seemed tricks in his hands. It is a mistake to do
things too easily. The serious people who took him seriously never felt quite sure of his
deportment: they were somehow aware that trusting their reputations for judgment with
him was like furnishing a nursery with eggshell china. So I don't think any of us said very
much about time travelling in the interval between that Thursday and the next, though its
odd potentialities ran, no doubt, in most of our minds: its plausibility, that is, its practical
incredibleness, the curious possibilities of anachronism and of utter confusion it suggested.
For my own part, I was particularly preoccupied with the trick of the model. That I
remember discussing with the Medical Man, whom I met on Friday at the Linnan. He said he
had seen a similar thing at Tybingen, and laid considerable stress on the blowing out of the
candle. But how the trick was done he could not explain.

The next Thursday I went again to Richmond, I suppose I was one of the Time Traveller's
most constant guests and, arriving late, found four or five men already assembled in his
drawing-room. The Medical Man was standing before the fire with a sheet of paper in one
hand and his watch in the other. I looked round for the Time Traveller, and "It's half-past
seven now," said the Medical Man. "I suppose we'd better have dinner?"

"Where's _____?" said I, naming our host.

"You've just come? It's rather odd. He's unavoidably detained. He asks me in this note to
lead off with dinner at seven if he's not back. Says he'll explain when he comes."

"It seems a pity to let the dinner spoil," said the Editor of a well-known daily paper; and
thereupon the Doctor rang the bell.

The Psychologist was the only person besides the Doctor and myself who had attended the
previous dinner. The other men were Blank, the Editor aforementioned, a certain journalist,
and another, a quiet, shy man with a beard whom I didn't know, and who, as far as my
observation went, never opened his mouth all the evening. There was some speculation at
the dinner-table about the Time Traveller's absence, and I suggested time travelling, in a
half-jocular spirit. The Editor wanted that explained to him, and the Psychologist
volunteered a wooden account of the "ingenious paradox and trick" we had witnessed that
day week. He was in the midst of his exposition when the door from the corridor opened
slowly and without noise. I was facing the door, and saw it first. "Hallo!" I said. "At last!"
And the door opened wider, and the Time Traveller stood before us. I gave a cry of surprise.
"Good heavens! man, what's the matter?" cried the Medical Man, who saw him next. And
the whole tableful turned towards the door.

He was in an amazing plight. His coat was dusty and dirty, and smeared with green down
the sleeves; his hair disordered, and as it seemed to me greyer either with dust and dirt or
because its colour had actually faded. His face was ghastly pale; his chin had a brown cut
on it a cut half healed; his expression was haggard and drawn, as by intense suffering. For
a moment he hesitated in the doorway, as if he had been dazzled by the light. Then he
came into the room. He walked with just such a limp as I have seen in footsore tramps. We
stared at him in silence, expecting him to speak.

He said not a word, but came painfully to the table, and made a motion towards the wine.
The Editor filled a glass of champagne, and pushed it towards him. He drained it, and it
seemed to do him good: for he looked round the table, and the ghost of his old smile
flickered across his face. "What on earth have you been up to, man?" said the Doctor. The
Time Traveller did not seem to hear. "Don't let me disturb you," he said, with a certain
faltering articulation. "I'm all right." He stopped, held out his glass for more, and took it off
at a draught. "That's good," he said. His eyes grew brighter, and a faint colour came into his
cheeks. His glance flickered over our faces with a certain dull approval, and then went round
the warm and comfortable room. Then he spoke again, still as it were feeling his way
among his words. "I'm going to wash and dress, and then I'll come down and explain
things. . . . Save me some of that mutton. I'm starving for a bit of meat."

He looked across at the Editor, who was a rare visitor, and hoped he was all right. The
Editor began a question. "Tell you presently," said the Time Traveller. "I'm funny! Be all
right in a minute."

He put down his glass, and walked towards the staircase door. Again I remarked his
lameness and the soft padding sound of his footfall, and standing up in my place, I saw his
feet as he went out. He had nothing on them but a pair of tattered blood-stained socks.
Then the door closed upon him. I had half a mind to follow, till I remembered how he
detested any fuss about himself. For a minute, perhaps, my mind was wool gathering. Then,
"Remarkable Behaviour of an Eminent Scientist," I heard the Editor say, thinking (after his
wont) in headlines. And this brought my attention back to the bright dinner-table.

"What's the game?" said the Journalist. "Has he been doing the Amateur Cadger? I don't
follow." I met the eye of the psychologist, and read my own interpretation in his face. I
thought of the Time Traveller limping painfully upstairs. I don't think any one else had
noticed his lameness.

The first to recover completely from this surprise was the Medical Man, who rang the bell
the Time Traveller hated to have servants waiting at dinner for a hot plate. At that the
Editor turned to his knife and fork with a grunt, and the Silent Man followed suit. The dinner
was resumed. Conversation was exclamatory for a little while, with gaps of wonderment;
and then the Editor got fervent in his curiosity. "Does our friend eke out his modest income
with a crossing? or has he his Nebuchadnezzar phases?" he inquired. "I feel assured it's this
business of the Time Machine," I said, and took up the Psychologist's account of our
previous meeting. The new guests were frankly incredulous. The Editor raised objections.
"What was this time travelling? A man couldn't cover himself with dust by rolling in a
paradox, could he?" And then, as the idea came home to him, he resorted to caricature.
Hadn't they any clothes-brushes in the Future? The Journalist too, would not believe at any
price, and joined the Editor in the easy work of heaping ridicule on the whole thing. They
were both the new kind of journalist very joyous, irreverent young men. "Our Special
Correspondent in the Day after To-morrow reports," the Journalist was saying, or rather
shouting, when the Time Traveller came back. He was dressed in ordinary evening clothes,
and nothing save his haggard look remained of the change that had startled me.

"I say," said the Editor hilariously, "these chaps here say you have been travelling into the
middle of next week! Tell us all about little Rosebery, will you? What will you take for the
lot?"

The Time Traveller came to the place reserved for him without a word. He smiled quietly, in
his old way. "Where's my mutton?" he said. "What a treat it is to stick a fork into meat
again!"

"Story!" cried the Editor.

"Story be damned!" said the Time Traveller. "I want something to eat. I won't say a word
until I get some peptone into my arteries. Thanks. And the salt."

"One word," said I. "Have you been time travelling?"

"Yes," said the Time Traveller, with his mouth full, nodding his head.

"I'd give a shilling a line for a verbatim note," said the Editor. The Time Traveller pushed his
glass towards the Silent Man and rang it with his finger nail; at which the Silent Man, who
had been staring at his face, started convulsively, and poured him wine. The rest of the
dinner was uncomfortable. For my own part, sudden questions kept on rising to my lips, and
I dare say it was the same with the others. The Journalist tried to relieve the tension by
telling anecdotes of Hettie Potter. The Time Traveller devoted his attention to his dinner,
and displayed the appetite of a tramp. The Medical Man smoked a cigarette, and watched
the Time Traveller through his eyelashes. The Silent Man seemed even more clumsy than
usual, and drank champagne with regularity and determination out of sheer nervousness. At
last the Time Traveller pushed his plate away, and looked round us. "I suppose I must
apologize," he said. "I was simply starving. I've had a most amazing time." He reached out
his hand for a cigar, and cut the end. "But come into the smoking-room. It's too long a
story to tell over greasy plates." And ringing the bell in passing, he led the way into the
adjoining room.

"You have told Blank, and Dash, and Chose about the machine?" he said to me, leaning
back in his easy chair and naming the three new guests.

"But the thing's a mere paradox," said the Editor.

"I can't argue to-night. I don't mind telling you the story, but I can't argue. I will," he went
on, "tell you the story of what has happened to me, if you like, but you must refrain from
interruptions. I want to tell it. Badly. Most of it will sound like lying. So be it! It's true every
word of it, all the same. I was in my laboratory at four o'clock, and since then . . . I've lived
eight days . . . such days as no human being ever lived before! I'm nearly worn out, but I
shan't sleep till I've told this thing over to you. Then I shall go to bed. But no interruptions!
Is it agreed?"

"Agreed," said the Editor, and the rest of us echoed "Agreed." And with that the Time
Traveller began his story as I have set it forth. He sat back in his chair at first, and spoke
like a weary man. Afterwards he got more animated. In writing it down I feel with only too
much keenness the inadequacy of pen and ink and, above all, my own inadequacy to
express its quality. You read, I will suppose, attentively enough; but you cannot see the
speaker's white, sincere face in the bright circle of the little lamp, nor hear the intonation of
his voice. You cannot know how his expression followed the turns of his story! Most of us
hearers were in shadow, for the candles in the smoking-room had not been lighted, and
only the face of the Journalist and the legs of the Silent Man from the knees downward were
illuminated. At first we glanced now and again at each other. After a time we ceased to do
that, and looked only at the Time Traveller's face.

III

"I told some of you last Thursday of the principles of the Time Machine, and showed you the
actual thing itself, incomplete in the workshop. There it is now, a little travel-worn, truly;
and one of the ivory bars is cracked, and a brass rail bent; but the rest of it's sound
enough. I expected to finish it on Friday, but on Friday, when the putting together was
nearly done, I found that one of the nickel bars was exactly one inch too short, and this I
had to get remade; so that the thing was not complete until this morning. It was at ten
o'clock to-day that the first of all Time Machines began its career. I gave it a last tap, tried
all the screws again, put one more drop of oil on the quartz rod, and sat myself in the
saddle. I suppose a suicide who holds a pistol to his skull feels much the same wonder at
what will come next as I felt then. I took the starting lever in one hand and the stopping
one in the other, pressed the first, and almost immediately the second. I seemed to reel; I
felt a nightmare sensation of falling; and, looking round, I saw the laboratory exactly as
before. Had anything happened? For a moment I suspected that my intellect had tricked
me. Then I noted the clock. A moment before, as it seemed, it had stood at a minute or so
past ten; now it was nearly half-past three! "I drew a breath, set my teeth, gripped the
starting lever with both hands, and went off with a thud. The laboratory got hazy and went
dark. Mrs. Watchett came in and walked, apparently without seeing me, towards the garden
door. I suppose it took her a minute or so to traverse the place, but to me she seemed to
shoot across the room like a rocket. I pressed the lever over to its extreme position. The
night came like the turning out of a lamp, and in another moment came to-morrow. The
laboratory grew faint and hazy, then fainter and ever fainter. To-morrow night came black,
then day again, night again, day again, faster and faster still. An eddying murmur filled my
ears, and a strange, dumb confusedness descended on my mind.

"I am afraid I cannot convey the peculiar sensations of time travelling. They are excessively
unpleasant. There is a feeling exactly like that one has upon a switchback of a helpless
headlong motion! I felt the same horrible anticipation, too, of an imminent smash. As I put
on pace, night followed day like the flapping of a black wing. The dim suggestion of the
laboratory seemed presently to fall away from me, and I saw the sun hopping swiftly across
the sky, leaping it every minute, and every minute marking a day. I supposed the
laboratory had been destroyed and I had come into the open air. I had a dim impression of
scaffolding, but I was already going too fast to be conscious of any moving things. The
slowest snail that ever crawled dashed by too fast for me. The twinkling succession of
darkness and light was excessively painful to the eye. Then, in the intermittent darknesses,
I saw the moon spinning swiftly through her quarters from new to full, and had a faint
glimpse of the circling stars. Presently, as I went on, still gaining velocity, the palpitation of
night and day merged into one continuous greyness; the sky took on a wonderful deepness
of blue, a splendid luminous color like that of early twilight; the jerking sun became a streak
of fire, a brilliant arch, in space; the moon a fainter fluctuating band; and I could see
nothing of the stars, save now and then a brighter circle flickering in the blue.

"The landscape was misty and vague. I was still on the hillside upon which this house now
stands, and the shoulder rose above me grey and dim. I saw trees growing and changing
like puffs of vapour, now brown, now green; they grew, spread, shivered, and passed away.
I saw huge buildings rise up faint and fair, and pass like dreams. The whole surface of the
earth seemed changed melting and flowing under my eyes. The little hands upon the dials
that registered my speed raced round faster and faster. Presently I noted that the sun belt
swayed up and down, from solstice to solstice, in a minute or less, and that consequently
my pace was over a year a minute; and minute by minute the white snow flashed across
the world, and vanished, and was followed by the bright, brief green of spring.

"The unpleasant sensations of the start were less poignant now. They merged at last into a
kind of hysterical exhilaration. I remarked indeed a clumsy swaying of the machine, for
which I was unable to account. But my mind was too confused to attend to it, so with a kind
of madness growing upon me, I flung myself into futurity. At first I scarce thought of
stopping, scarce thought of anything but these new sensations. But presently a fresh series
of impressions grew up in my mind a certain curiosity and therewith a certain dread until at
last they took complete possession of me. What strange developments of humanity, what
wonderful advances upon our rudimentary civilization, I thought, might not appear when I
came to look nearly into the dim elusive world that raced and fluctuated before my eyes! I
saw great and splendid architecture rising about me, more massive than any buildings of
our own time, and yet, as it seemed, built of glimmer and mist. I saw a richer green flow up
the hillside, and remain there, without any wintry intermission. Even through the veil of my
confusion the earth seemed very fair. And so my mind came round to the business of
stopping.

"The peculiar risk lay in the possibility of my finding some substance in the space which I, or
the machine, occupied. So long as I travelled at a high velocity through time, this scarcely
mattered; I was, so to speak, attenuated was slipping like a vapour through the interstices
of intervening substances! But to come to a stop involved the jamming of myself, molecule
by molecule, into whatever lay in my way; meant bringing my atoms into such intimate
contact with those of the obstacle that a profound chemical reaction possibly a far-reaching
explosion would result, and blow myself and my apparatus out of all possible dimensions
into the Unknown. This possibility had occurred to me again and again while I was making
the machine; but then I had cheerfully accepted it as an unavoidable risk one of the risks a
man has got to take! Now the risk was inevitable, I no longer saw it in the same cheerful
light. The fact is that insensibly, the absolute strangeness of everything, the sickly jarring
and swaying of the machine, above all, the feeling of prolonged falling, had absolutely upset
my nerve. I told myself that I could never stop, and with a gust of petulance I resolved to
stop forthwith. Like an impatient fool, I lugged over the lever, and incontinently the thing
went reeling over, and I was flung headlong through the air.

"There was the sound of a clap of thunder in my ears. I may have been stunned for a
moment. A pitiless hail was hissing round me, and I was sitting on soft turf in front of the
overset machine. Everything still seemed grey, but presently I remarked that the confusion
in my ears was gone. I looked round me. I was on what seemed to be a little lawn in a
garden, surrounded by rhododendron bushes, and I noticed that their mauve and purple
blossoms were dropping in a shower under the beating of the hailstones. The rebounding,
dancing hail hung in a cloud over the machine, and drove along the ground like smoke. In a
moment I was wet to the skin. 'Fine hospitality,' said I, 'to a man who has travelled
innumerable years to see you.'

"Presently I thought what a fool I was to get wet. I stood up and looked round me. A
colossal figure, carved apparently in some white stone, loomed indistinctly beyond the
rhododendrons through the hazy downpour. But all else of the world was invisible.

"My sensations would be hard to describe. As the columns of hail grew thinner, I saw the
white figure more distinctly. It was very large, for a silver birch-tree touched its shoulder. It
was of white marble, in shape something like a winged sphinx, but the wings, instead of
being carried vertically at the sides, were spread so that it seemed to hover. The pedestal, it
appeared to me, was of bronze, and was thick with verdigris. It chanced that the face was
towards me; the sightless eyes seemed to watch me; there was the faint shadow of a smile
on the lips. It was greatly weather-worn, and that imparted an unpleasant suggestion of
disease. I stood looking at it for a little space half a minute, perhaps, or half an hour. It
seemed to advance and to recede as the hail drove before it denser or thinner. At last I tore
my eyes from it for a moment and saw that the hail curtain had worn threadbare, and that
the sky was lightening with the promise of the Sun.

"I looked up again at the crouching white shape, and the full temerity of my voyage came
suddenly upon me. What might appear when that hazy curtain was altogether withdrawn?
What might not have happened to men? What if cruelty had grown into a common passion?
What if in this interval the race had lost its manliness and had developed into something
inhuman, unsympathetic, and overwhelmingly powerful? I might seem some old-world
savage animal, only the more dreadful and disgusting for our common likeness a foul
creature to be incontinently slain.

"Already I saw other vast shapes--huge buildings with intricate parapets and tall columns,
with a wooded hill-side dimly creeping in upon me through the lessening storm. I was
seized with a panic fear. I turned frantically to the Time Machine, and strove hard to
readjust it. As I did so the shafts of the sun smote through the thunderstorm. The grey
downpour was swept aside and vanished like the trailing garments of a ghost. Above me, in
the intense blue of the summer sky, some faint brown shreds of cloud whirled into
nothingness. The great buildings about me stood out clear and distinct, shining with the wet
of the thunderstorm, and picked out in white by the unmelted hailstones piled along their
courses. I felt naked in a strange world. I felt as perhaps a bird may feel in the clear air,
knowing the hawk wings above and will swoop. My fear grew to frenzy. I took a breathing
space, set my teeth, and again grappled fiercely, wrist and knee, with the machine. It gave
under my desperate onset and turned over. It struck my chin violently. One hand on the
saddle, the other on the lever, I stood panting heavily in attitude to mount again.

"But with this recovery of a prompt retreat my courage recovered. I looked more curiously
and less fearfully at this world of the remote future. In a circular opening, high up in the
wall of the nearer house, I saw a group of figures clad in rich soft robes. They had seen me,
and their faces were directed towards me.

"Then I heard voices approaching me. Coming through the bushes by the White Sphinx
were the heads and shoulders of men running. One of these emerged in a pathway leading
straight to the little lawn upon which I stood with my machine. He was a slight creature--
perhaps four feet high clad in a purple tunic, girdled at the waist with a leather belt. Sandals
or buskins I could not clearly distinguish which--were on his feet; his legs were bare to the
knees, and his head was bare. Noticing that, I noticed for the first time how warm the air
was.

"He struck me as being a very beautiful and graceful creature, but indescribably frail. His
flushed face reminded me of the more beautiful kind of consumptive that hectic beauty of
which we used to hear so much. At the sight of him I suddenly regained confidence. I took
my hands from the machine.

IV

"In another moment we were standing face to face, I and this fragile thing out of futurity.
He came straight up to me and laughed into my eyes. The absence from his bearing of any
sign of fear struck me at once. Then he turned to the two others who were following him
and spoke to them in a strange and very sweet and liquid tongue.

"There were others coming, and presently a little group of perhaps eight or ten of these
exquisite creatures were about me. One of them addressed me. It came into my head,
oddly enough, that my voice was too harsh and deep for them. So I shook my head, and,
pointing to my ears, shook it again. He came a step forward, hesitated, and then touched
my hand. Then I felt other soft little tentacles upon my back and shoulders. They wanted to
make sure I was real. There was nothing in this at all alarming. Indeed, there was
something in these pretty little people that inspired confidence, a graceful gentleness, a
certain childlike ease. And besides, they looked so frail that I could fancy myself flinging the
whole dozen of them about like nine-pins. But I made a sudden motion to warn them when
I saw their little pink hands feeling at the Time Machine. Happily then, when it was not too
late, I thought of a danger I had hitherto forgotten, and reaching over the bars of the
machine I unscrewed the little levers that would set it in motion, and put these in my
pocket. Then I turned again to see what I could do in the way of communication.

"And then, looking more nearly into their features, I saw some further peculiarities in their
Dresden china type of prettiness. Their hair, which was uniformly curly, came to a sharp end
at the neck and cheek; there was not the faintest suggestion of it on the face, and their
ears were singularly minute. The mouths were small, with bright red, rather thin lips, and
the little chins ran to a point. The eyes were large and mild; and this may seem egotism on
my part I fancied even that there was a certain lack of the interest I might have expected in
them.

"As they made no effort to communicate with me, but simply stood round me smiling and
speaking in soft cooing notes to each other, I began the conversation. I pointed to the Time
Machine and to myself. Then hesitating for a moment how to express time, I pointed to the
sun. At once a quaintly pretty little figure in chequered purple and white followed my
gesture, and then astonished me by imitating the sound of thunder.

"For a moment I was staggered, though the import of his gesture was plain enough. The
question had come into my mind abruptly: were these creatures fools? You may hardly
understand how it took me. You see I had always anticipated that the people of the year
Eight Hundred and Two Thousand odd would be incredibly in front of us in knowledge, art,
everything. Then one of them suddenly asked me a question that showed him to be on the
intellectual level of one of our five-year-old children asked me, in fact, if I had come from
the sun in a thunderstorm! It let loose the judgment I had suspended upon their clothes,
their frail light limbs, and fragile features. A flow of disappointment rushed across my mind.
For a moment I felt that I had built the Time Machine in vain.

"I nodded, pointed to the sun, and gave them such a vivid rendering of a thunderclap as
startled them. They all withdrew a pace or so and bowed. Then came one laughing towards
me, carrying a chain of beautiful flowers altogether new to me, and put it about my neck.
The idea was received with melodious applause; and presently they were all running to and
fro for flowers, and laughingly flinging them upon me until I was almost smothered with
blossom. You who have never seen the like can scarcely imagine what delicate and
wonderful flowers countless years of culture had created. Then someone suggested that
their plaything should be exhibited in the nearest building, and so I was led past the sphinx
of white marble, which had seemed to watch me all the while with a smile at my
astonishment, towards a vast grey edifice of fretted stone. As I went with them the memory
of my confident anticipations of a profoundly grave and intellectual posterity came, with
irresistible merriment, to my mind.

"The building had a huge entry, and was altogether of colossal dimensions. I was naturally
most occupied with the growing crowd of little people, and with the big open portals that
yawned before me shadowy and mysterious. My general impression of the world I saw over
their heads was a tangled waste of beautiful bushes and flowers, a long neglected and yet
weedless garden. I saw a number of tall spikes of strange white flowers, measuring a foot
perhaps across the spread of the waxen petals. They grew scattered, as if wild, among the
variegated shrubs, but, as I say, I did not examine them closely at this time. The Time
Machine was left deserted on the turf among the rhododendrons.

"The arch of the doorway was richly carved, but naturally I did not observe the carving very
narrowly, though I fancied I saw suggestions of old Phoenician decorations as I passed
through, and it struck me that they were very badly broken and weather- worn. Several
more brightly clad people met me in the doorway, and so we entered, I, dressed in dingy
nineteenth-century garments, looking grotesque enough, garlanded with flowers, and
surrounded by an eddying mass of bright, soft-colored robes and shining white limbs, in a
melodious whirl of laughter and laughing speech.

"The big doorway opened into a proportionately great hall hung with brown. The roof was in
shadow, and the windows, partially glazed with coloured glass and partially unglazed,
admitted a tempered light. The floor was made up of huge blocks of some very hard white
metal, not plates nor slabs, blocks, and it was so much worn, as I judged by the going to
and fro of past generations, as to be deeply channelled along the more frequented ways.
Transverse to the length were innumerable tables made of slabs of polished stone, raised
perhaps a foot from the floor, and upon these were heaps of fruits. Some I recognized as a
kind of hypertrophied raspberry and orange, but for the most part they were strange.

"Between the tables was scattered a great number of cushions. Upon these my conductors
seated themselves, signing for me to do likewise. With a pretty absence of ceremony they
began to eat the fruit with their hands, flinging peel and stalks, and so forth, into the round
openings in the sides of the tables. I was not loath to follow their example, for I felt thirsty
and hungry. As I did so I surveyed the hall at my leisure.

"And perhaps the thing that struck me most was its dilapidated look. The stained-glass
windows, which displayed only a geometrical pattern, were broken in many places, and the
curtains that hung across the lower end were thick with dust. And it caught my eye that the
corner of the marble table near me was fractured. Nevertheless, the general effect was
extremely rich and picturesque. There were, perhaps, a couple of hundred people dining in
the hall, and most of them, seated as near to me as they could come, were watching me
with interest, their little eyes shining over the fruit they were eating. All were clad in the
same soft and yet strong, silky material.

"Fruit, by the by, was all their diet. These people of the remote future were strict
vegetarians, and while I was with them, in spite of some carnal cravings, I had to be
frugivorous also. Indeed, I found afterwards that horses, cattle, sheep, dogs, had followed
the Ichthyosaurus into extinction. But the fruits were very delightful; one, in particular, that
seemed to be in season all the time I was there--a floury thing in a three-sided husk was
especially good, and I made it my staple. At first I was puzzled by all these strange fruits,
and by the strange flowers I saw, but later I began to perceive their import.

"However, I am telling you of my fruit dinner in the distant future now. So soon as my
appetite was a little checked, I determined to make a resolute attempt to learn the speech
of these new men of mine. Clearly that was the next thing to do. The fruits seemed a
convenient thing to begin upon, and holding one of these up I began a series of
interrogative sounds and gestures. I had some considerable difficulty in conveying my
meaning. At first my efforts met with a stare of surprise or inextinguishable laughter, but
presently a fair-haired little creature seemed to grasp my intention and repeated a name.
They had to chatter and explain the business at great length to each other, and my first
attempts to make the exquisite little sounds of their language caused an immense amount
of amusement. However, I felt like a schoolmaster amidst children, and persisted, and
presently I had a score of noun substantives at least at my command; and then I got to
demonstrative pronouns, and even the verb "to eat." But it was slow work, and the little
people soon tired and wanted to get away from my interrogations, so I determined, rather
of necessity, to let them give their lessons in little doses when they felt inclined. And very
little doses I found they were before long, for I never met people more indolent or more
easily fatigued.
"A queer thing I soon discovered about my little hosts, and that was their lack of interest.
They would come to me with eager cries of astonishment, like children, but like children
they would soon stop examining me and wander away after some other toy. The dinner and
my conversational beginnings ended, I noted for the first time that almost all those who had
surrounded me at first were gone. It is odd, too, how speedily I came to disregard these
little people. I went out through the portal into the sunlit world again as soon as my hunger
was satisfied. I was continually meeting more of these men of the future, who would follow
me a little distance, chatter and laugh about me, and, having smiled and gesticulated in a
friendly way, leave me again to my own devices.

"The calm of evening was upon the world as I emerged from the great hall, and the scene
was lit by the warm glow of the setting sun. At first things were very confusing. Everything
was so entirely different from the world I had known even the flowers. The big building I
had left was situated on the slope of a broad river valley, but the Thames had shifted
perhaps a mile from its present position. I resolved to mount to the summit of a crest
perhaps a mile and a half away, from which I could get a wider view of this our planet in the
year Eight Hundred and Two Thousand Seven Hundred and One A.D. For that, I should
explain, was the date the little dials of my machine recorded.

"As I walked I was watching for every impression that could possibly help to explain the
condition of ruinous splendour in which I found the world for ruinous it was. A little way up
the hill, for instance, was a great heap of granite, bound together by masses of aluminium,
a vast labyrinth of precipitous walls and crumpled heaps, amidst which were thick heaps of
very beautiful pagoda-like plants, nettles possibly--but wonderfully tinted with brown about
the leaves, and incapable of stinging. It was evidently the derelict remains of some vast
structure, to what end built I could not determine. It was here that I was destined, at a
later date, to have a very strange experience the first intimation of a still stranger discovery
but of that I will speak in its proper place.

"Looking round with a sudden thought, from a terrace on which I rested for a while, I
realized that there were no small houses to be seen. Apparently the single house, and
possibly even the household, had vanished. Here and there among the greenery were
palace-like buildings, but the house and the cottage, which form such characteristic features
of our own English landscape, had disappeared.

"'Communism,' said I to myself.

"And on the heels of that came another thought. I looked at the half-dozen little figures that
were following me. Then, in a flash, I perceived that all had the same form of costume, the
same soft hairless visage, and the same girlish rotundity of limb. It may seem strange,
perhaps, that I had not noticed this before. But everything was so strange. Now, I saw the
fact plainly enough. In costume, and in all the differences of texture and bearing that now
mark off the sexes from each other, these people of the future were alike. And the children
seemed to my eyes to be but the miniatures of their parents. I judged, then, that the
children of that time were extremely precocious, physically at least, and I found afterwards
abundant verification of my opinion.

"Seeing the ease and security in which these people were living, I felt that this close
resemblance of the sexes was after all what one would expect; for the strength of a man
and the softness of a woman, the institution of the family, and the differentiation of
occupations are mere militant necessities of an age of physical force; where population is
balanced and abundant, much child-bearing becomes an evil rather than a blessing to the
State; where violence comes but rarely and offspring are secure, there is less necessity,
indeed there is no necessity, for an efficient family, and the specialization of the sexes with
reference to their children's needs disappears. We see some beginnings of this even in our
own time, and in this future age it was complete. This, I must remind you, was my
speculation at the time. Later, I was to appreciate how far it fell short of the reality.

"While I was musing upon these things, my attention was attracted by a pretty little
structure, like a well under a cupola. I thought in a transitory way of the oddness of wells
still existing, and then resumed the thread of my speculations. There were no large
buildings towards the top of the hill, and as my walking powers were evidently miraculous, I
was presently left alone for the first time. With a strange sense of freedom and adventure I
pushed on up to the crest.

"There I found a seat of some yellow metal that I did not recognize, corroded in places with
a kind of pinkish rust and half smothered in soft moss, the arm-rests cast and filed into the
resemblance of griffins' heads. I sat down on it, and I surveyed the broad view of our old
world under the sunset of that long day. It was as sweet and fair a view as I have ever
seen. The sun had already gone below the horizon and the west was flaming gold, touched
with some horizontal bars of purple and crimson. Below was the valley of the Thames, in
which the river lay like a band of burnished steel. I have already spoken of the great
palaces dotted about among the variegated greenery, some in ruins and some still occupied.
Here and there rose a white or silvery figure in the waste garden of the earth, here and
there came the sharp vertical line of some cupola or obelisk. There were no hedges, no
signs of proprietary rights, no evidences of agriculture; the whole earth had become a
garden.

"So watching, I began to put my interpretation upon the things I had seen, and as it shaped
itself to me that evening, my interpretation was something in this way. (Afterwards I found
I had got only a half-truth or only a glimpse of one facet of the truth.)

"It seemed to me that I had happened upon humanity upon the wane. The ruddy sunset set
me thinking of the sunset of mankind. For the first time I began to realize an odd
consequence of the social effort in which we are at present engaged. And yet, come to
think, it is a logical consequence enough. Strength is the outcome of need; security sets a
premium on feebleness. The work of ameliorating the conditions of life, the true civilizing
process that makes life more and more secure had gone steadily on to a climax. One
triumph of a united humanity over Nature had followed another. Things that are now mere
dreams had become projects deliberately put in hand and carried forward. And the harvest
was what I saw!

"After all, the sanitation and the agriculture of to-day are still in the rudimentary stage. The
science of our time has attacked but a little department of the field of human disease, but
even so, it spreads its operations very steadily and persistently. Our agriculture and
horticulture destroy a weed just here and there and cultivate perhaps a score or so of
wholesome plants, leaving the greater number to fight out a balance as they can. We
improve our favourite plants and animals, and how few they are, gradually by selective
breeding; now a new and better peach, now a seedless grape, now a sweeter and larger
flower, now a more convenient breed of cattle. We improve them gradually, because our
ideals are vague and tentative, and our knowledge is very limited; because Nature, too, is
shy and slow in our clumsy hands. Some day all this will be better organized, and still
better. That is the drift of the current in spite of the eddies. The whole world will be
intelligent, educated, and co-operating; things will move faster and faster towards the
subjugation of Nature. In the end, wisely and carefully we shall readjust the balance of
animal and vegetable to suit our human needs.
"This adjustment, I say, must have been done, and done well; done indeed for all Time, in
the space of Time across which my machine had leaped. The air was free from gnats, the
earth from weeds or fungi; everywhere were fruits and sweet and delightful flowers; brilliant
butterflies flew hither and thither. The ideal of preventive medicine was attained. Diseases
had been stamped out. I saw no evidence of any contagious diseases during all my stay.
And I shall have to tell you later that even the processes of putrefaction and decay had
been profoundly affected by these changes.

"Social triumphs, too, had been effected. I saw mankind housed in splendid shelters,
gloriously clothed, and as yet I had found them engaged in no toil. There were no signs of
struggle, neither social nor economical struggle. The shop, the advertisement, traffic, all
that commerce which constitutes the body of our world, was gone. It was natural on that
golden evening that I should jump at the idea of a social paradise. The difficulty of
increasing population had been met, I guessed, and population had ceased to increase.

"But with this change in condition comes inevitably adaptations to the change. What, unless
biological science is a mass of errors, is the cause of human intelligence and vigour?
Hardship and freedom: conditions under which the active, strong, and subtle survive and
the weaker go to the wall; conditions that put a premium upon the loyal alliance of capable
men, upon self-restraint, patience, and decision. And the institution of the family, and the
emotions that arise therein, the fierce jealousy, the tenderness for offspring, parental self-
devotion, all found their justification and support in the imminent dangers of the young.
Now, where are these imminent dangers? There is a sentiment arising, and it will grow,
against connubial jealousy, against fierce maternity, against passion of all sorts;
unnecessary things now, and things that make us uncomfortable, savage survivals, discords
in a refined and pleasant life.

"I thought of the physical slightness of the people, their lack of intelligence, and those big
abundant ruins, and it strengthened my belief in a perfect conquest of Nature. For after the
battle comes Quiet. Humanity had been strong, energetic, and intelligent, and had used all
its abundant vitality to alter the conditions under which it lived. And now came the reaction
of the altered conditions.

"Under the new conditions of perfect comfort and security, that restless energy, that with us
is strength, would become weakness. Even in our own time certain tendencies and desires,
once necessary to survival, are a constant source of failure. Physical courage and the love of
battle, for instance, are no great help, may even be hindrances, to a civilized man. And in a
state of physical balance and security, power, intellectual as well as physical, would be out
of place. For countless years I judged there had been no danger of war or solitary violence,
no danger from wild beasts, no wasting disease to require strength of constitution, no need
of toil. For such a life, what we should call the weak are as well equipped as the strong, are
indeed no longer weak. Better equipped indeed they are, for the strong would be fretted by
an energy for which there was no outlet. No doubt the exquisite beauty of the buildings I
saw was the outcome of the last surgings of the now purposeless energy of mankind before
it settled down into perfect harmony with the conditions under which it lived, the flourish of
that triumph which began the last great peace. This has ever been the fate of energy in
security; it takes to art and to eroticism, and then come languor and decay.

"Even this artistic impetus would at last die away, had almost died in the Time I saw. To
adorn themselves with flowers, to dance, to sing in the sunlight: so much was left of the
artistic spirit, and no more. Even that would fade in the end into a contented inactivity. We
are kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity, and, it seemed to me, that here was
that hateful grindstone broken at last!

"As I stood there in the gathering dark I thought that in this simple explanation I had
mastered the problem of the world, mastered the whole secret of these delicious people.
Possibly the checks they had devised for the increase of population had succeeded too well,
and their numbers had rather diminished than kept stationary. That would account for the
abandoned ruins. Very simple was my explanation, and plausible enough as most wrong
theories are!

"As I stood there musing over this too perfect triumph of man, the full moon, yellow and
gibbous, came up out of an overflow of silver light in the north-east. The bright little figures
ceased to move about below, a noiseless owl flitted by, and I shivered with the chill of the
night. I determined to descend and find where I could sleep.

"I looked for the building I knew. Then my eye travelled along to the figure of the White
Sphinx upon the pedestal of bronze, growing distinct as the light of the rising moon grew
brighter. I could see the silver birch against it. There was the tangle of rhododendron
bushes, black in the pale light, and there was the little lawn. I looked at the lawn again. A
queer doubt chilled my complacency. 'No,' said I stoutly to myself,' that was not the lawn.'

"But it was the lawn. For the white leprous face of the sphinx was towards it. Can you
imagine what I felt as this conviction came home to me? But you cannot. The Time Machine
was gone!

"At once, like a lash across the face, came the possibility of losing my own age, of being left
helpless in this strange new world. The bare thought of it was an actual physical sensation. I
could feel it grip me at the throat and stop my breathing. In another moment I was in a
passion of fear and running with great leaping strides down the slope. Once I fell headlong
and cut my face; I lost no time in stanching the blood, but jumped up and ran on, with a
warm trickle down my cheek and chin. All the time I ran I was saying to myself, 'They have
moved it a little, pushed it under the bushes out of the way.' Nevertheless, I ran with all my
might. All the time, with the certainty that sometimes comes with excessive dread, I knew
that such assurance was folly, knew instinctively that the machine was removed out of my
reach. My breath came with pain. I suppose I covered the whole distance from the hill crest
to the little lawn, two miles perhaps, in ten minutes. And I am not a young man. I cursed
aloud, as I ran, at my confident folly in leaving the machine, wasting good breath thereby. I
cried aloud, and none answered. Not a creature seemed to be stirring in that moonlit world.

"When I reached the lawn my worst fears were realized. Not a trace of the thing was to be
seen. I felt faint and cold when I faced the empty space among the black tangle of bushes. I
ran round it furiously, as if the thing might be hidden in a corner, and then stopped
abruptly, with my hands clutching my hair. Above me towered the sphinx, upon the bronze
pedestal, white, shining, leprous, in the light of the rising moon. It seemed to smile in
mockery of my dismay.

"I might have consoled myself by imagining the little people had put the mechanism in
some shelter for me, had I not felt assured of their physical and intellectual inadequacy.
That is what dismayed me: the sense of some hitherto unsuspected power, through whose
intervention my invention had vanished. Yet, for one thing I felt assured: unless some other
age had produced its exact duplicate, the machine could not have moved in time. The
attachment of the levers, I will show you the method later, prevented any one from
tampering with it in that way when they were removed. It had moved, and was hid, only in
space. But then, where could it be?

"I think I must have had a kind of frenzy. I remember running violently in and out among
the moonlit bushes all round the sphinx, and startling some white animal that, in the dim
light, I took for a small deer. I remember, too, late that night, beating the bushes with my
clenched fist until my knuckles were gashed and bleeding from the broken twigs. Then,
sobbing and raving in my anguish of mind, I went down to the great building of stone. The
big hall was dark, silent, and deserted. I slipped on the uneven floor, and fell over one of
the malachite tables, almost breaking my shin. I lit a match and went on past the dusty
curtains, of which I have told you.

"There I found a second great hall covered with cushions, upon which, perhaps, a score or
so of the little people were sleeping. I have no doubt they found my second appearance
strange enough, coming suddenly out of the quiet darkness with inarticulate noises and the
splutter and flare of a match. For they had forgotten about matches. 'Where is my Time
Machine?' I began, bawling like an angry child, laying hands upon them and shaking them
up together. It must have been very queer to them. Some laughed, most of them looked
sorely frightened. When I saw them standing round me, it came into my head that I was
doing as foolish a thing as it was possible for me to do under the circumstances, in trying to
revive the sensation of fear. For, reasoning from their daylight behaviour, I thought that
fear must be forgotten.

"Abruptly, I dashed down the match, and, knocking one of the people over in my course,
went blundering across the big dining-hall again, out under the moonlight. I heard cries of
terror and their little feet running and stumbling this way and that. I do not remember all I
did as the moon crept up the sky. I suppose it was the unexpected nature of my loss that
maddened me. I felt hopelessly cut off from my own kind, a strange animal in an unknown
world. I must have raved to and fro, screaming and crying upon God and Fate. I have a
memory of horrible fatigue, as the long night of despair wore away; of looking in this
impossible place and that; of groping among moonlit ruins and touching strange creatures
in the black shadows; at last, of lying on the ground near the sphinx and weeping with
absolute wretchedness. I had nothing left but misery. Then I slept, and when I woke again
it was full day, and a couple of sparrows were hopping round me on the turf within reach of
my arm.

"I sat up in the freshness of the morning, trying to remember how I had got there, and why
I had such a profound sense of desertion and despair. Then things came clear in my mind.
With the plain, reasonable daylight, I could look my circumstances fairly in the face. I saw
the wild folly of my frenzy overnight, and I could reason with myself. 'Suppose the worst?' I
said. 'Suppose the machine altogether lost perhaps destroyed? It behoves me to be calm
and patient, to learn the way of the people, to get a clear idea of the method of my loss,
and the means of getting materials and tools; so that in the end, perhaps, I may make
another.' That would be my only hope, perhaps, but better than despair. And, after all, it
was a beautiful and curious world.

"But probably, the machine had only been taken away. Still, I must be calm and patient,
find its hiding-place, and recover it by force or cunning. And with that I scrambled to my
feet and looked about me, wondering where I could bathe. I felt weary, stiff, and travel-
soiled. The freshness of the morning made me desire an equal freshness. I had exhausted
my emotion. Indeed, as I went about my business, I found myself wondering at my intense
excitement overnight. I made a careful examination of the ground about the little lawn. I
wasted some time in futile questionings, conveyed, as well as I was able, to such of the
little people as came by. They all failed to understand my gestures; some were simply
stolid, some thought it was a jest and laughed at me. I had the hardest task in the world to
keep my hands off their pretty laughing faces. It was a foolish impulse, but the devil
begotten of fear and blind anger was ill curbed and still eager to take advantage of my
perplexity. The turf gave better counsel. I found a groove ripped in it, about midway
between the pedestal of the sphinx and the marks of my feet where, on arrival, I had
struggled with the overturned machine. There were other signs of removal about, with
queer narrow footprints like those I could imagine made by a sloth. This directed my closer
attention to the pedestal. It was, as I think I have said, of bronze. It was not a mere block,
but highly decorated with deep framed panels on either side. I went and rapped at these.
The pedestal was hollow. Examining the panels with care I found them discontinuous with
the frames. There were no handles or keyholes, but possibly the panels, if they were doors,
as I supposed, opened from within. One thing was clear enough to my mind. It took no very
great mental effort to infer that my Time Machine was inside that pedestal. But how it got
there was a different problem.

"I saw the heads of two orange-clad people coming through the bushes and under some
blossom-covered apple-trees towards me. I turned smiling to them and beckoned them to
me. They came, and then, pointing to the bronze pedestal, I tried to intimate my wish to
open it. But at my first gesture towards this they behaved very oddly. I don't know how to
convey their expression to you. Suppose you were to use a grossly improper gesture to a
delicate-minded woman, it is how she would look. They went off as if they had received the
last possible insult. I tried a sweet-looking little chap in white next, with exactly the same
result. Somehow, his manner made me feel ashamed of myself. But, as you know, I wanted
the Time Machine, and I tried him once more. As he turned off, like the others, my temper
got the better of me. In three strides I was after him, had him by the loose part of his robe
round the neck, and began dragging him towards the sphinx. Then I saw the horror and
repugnance of his face, and all of a sudden I let him go.

"But I was not beaten yet. I banged with my fist at the bronze panels. I thought I heard
something stir inside, to be explicit, I thought I heard a sound like a chuckle but I must
have been mistaken. Then I got a big pebble from the river, and came and hammered till I
had flattened a coil in the decorations, and the verdigris came off in powdery flakes. The
delicate little people must have heard me hammering in gusty outbreaks a mile away on
either hand, but nothing came of it. I saw a crowd of them upon the slopes, looking furtively
at me. At last, hot and tired, I sat down to watch the place. But I was too restless to watch
long; I am too Occidental for a long vigil. I could work at a problem for years, but to wait
inactive for twenty-four hours, that is another matter.

"I got up after a time, and began walking aimlessly through the bushes towards the hill
again. 'Patience,' said I to myself. 'If you want your machine again you must leave that
sphinx alone. If they mean to take your machine away, it's little good your wrecking their
bronze panels, and if they don't, you will get it back as soon as you can ask for it. To sit
among all those unknown things before a puzzle like that is hopeless. That way lies
monomania. Face this world. Learn its ways, watch it, be careful of too hasty guesses at its
meaning. In the end you will find clues to it all.' Then suddenly the humour of the situation
came into my mind: the thought of the years I had spent in study and toil to get into the
future age, and now my passion of anxiety to get out of it. I had made myself the most
complicated and the most hopeless trap that ever a man devised. Although it was at my
own expense, I could not help myself. I laughed aloud.

"Going through the big palace, it seemed to me that the little people avoided me. It may
have been my fancy, or it may have had something to do with my hammering at the gates
of bronze. Yet I felt tolerably sure of the avoidance. I was careful, however, to show no
concern and to abstain from any pursuit of them, and in the course of a day or two things
got back to the old footing. I made what progress I could in the language, and in addition I
pushed my explorations here and there. Either I missed some subtle point or their language
was excessively simple, almost exclusively composed of concrete substantives and verbs.
There seemed to be few, if any, abstract terms, or little use of figurative language. Their
sentences were usually simple and of two words, and I failed to convey or understand any
but the simplest propositions. I determined to put the thought of my Time Machine and the
mystery of the bronze doors under the sphinx as much as possible in a corner of memory,
until my growing knowledge would lead me back to them in a natural way. Yet a certain
feeling, you may understand, tethered me in a circle of a few miles round the point of my
arrival.

"So far as I could see, all the world displayed the same exuberant richness as the Thames
valley. From every hill I climbed I saw the same abundance of splendid buildings, endlessly
varied in material and style, the same clustering thickets of evergreens, the same blossom-
laden trees and tree ferns. Here and there water shone like silver, and beyond, the land
rose into blue undulating hills, and so faded into the serenity of the sky. A peculiar feature,
which presently attracted my attention, was the presence of certain circular wells, several,
as it seemed to me, of a very great depth. One lay by the path up the hill, which I had
followed during my first walk. Like the others, it was rimmed with bronze, curiously
wrought, and protected by a little cupola from the rain. Sitting by the side of these wells,
and peering down into the shafted darkness, I could see no gleam of water, nor could I start
any reflection with a lighted match. But in all of them I heard a certain sound: a thud, thud,
thud, like the beating of some big engine; and I discovered, from the flaring of my matches,
that a steady current of air set down the shafts. Further, I threw a scrap of paper into the
throat of one, and, instead of fluttering slowly down, it was at once sucked swiftly out of
sight.

"After a time, too, I came to connect these wells with tall towers standing here and there
upon the slopes; for above them there was often just such a flicker in the air as one sees on
a hot day above a sun-scorched beach. Putting things together, I reached a strong
suggestion of an extensive system of subterranean ventilation, whose true import it was
difficult to imagine. I was at first inclined to associate it with the sanitary apparatus of these
people. It was an obvious conclusion, but it was absolutely wrong.

"And here I must admit that I learned very little of drains and bells and modes of
conveyance, and the like conveniences, during my time in this real future. In some of these
visions of Utopias and coming times which I have read, there is a vast amount of detail
about building, and social arrangements, and so forth. But while such details are easy
enough to obtain when the whole world is contained in one's imagination, they are
altogether inaccessible to a real traveller amid such realities as I found here. Conceive the
tale of London which a negro, fresh from Central Africa, would take back to his tribe! What
would he know of railway companies, of social movements, of telephone and telegraph
wires, of the Parcels Delivery Company, and postal orders and the like? Yet we, at least,
should be willing enough to explain these things to him! And even of what he knew, how
much could he make his untravelled friend either apprehend or believe? Then, think how
narrow the gap between a negro and a white man of our own times, and how wide the
interval between myself and these of the Golden Age! I was sensible of much which was
unseen, and which contributed to my comfort; but save for a general impression of
automatic organization, I fear I can convey very little of the difference to your mind.
"In the matter of sepulchre, for instance, I could see no signs of crematoria nor anything
suggestive of tombs. But it occurred to me that, possibly, there might be cemeteries (or
crematoria) somewhere beyond the range of my explorings. This, again, was a question I
deliberately put to myself, and my curiosity was at first entirely defeated upon the point.
The thing puzzled me, and I was led to make a further remark, which puzzled me still more:
that aged and infirm among this people there were none.

"I must confess that my satisfaction with my first theories of an automatic civilization and a
decadent humanity did not long endure. Yet I could think of no other. Let me put my
difficulties. The several big palaces I had explored were mere living places, great dining-
halls and sleeping apartments. I could find no machinery, no appliances of any kind. Yet
these people were clothed in pleasant fabrics that must at times need renewal, and their
sandals, though undecorated, were fairly complex specimens of metal-work. Somehow such
things must be made. And the little people displayed no vestige of a creative tendency.
There were no shops, no workshops, no sign of importations among them. They spent all
their time in playing gently, in bathing in the river, in making love in a half-playful fashion,
in eating fruit and sleeping. I could not see how things were kept going.

"Then, again, about the Time Machine: something, I knew not what, had taken it into the
hollow pedestal of the White Sphinx. Why? For the life of me I could not imagine. Those
waterless wells, too, those flickering pillars. I felt I lacked a clue. I felt how shall I put it?
Suppose you found an inscription, with sentences here and there in excellent plain English,
and interpolated therewith, others made up of words, of letters even, absolutely unknown to
you? Well, on the third day of my visit, that was how the world of Eight Hundred and Two
Thousand Seven Hundred and One presented itself to me!

"That day, too, I made a friend of a sort. It happened that, as I was watching some of the
little people bathing in a shallow, one of them was seized with cramp and began drifting
downstream. The main current ran rather swiftly, but not too strongly for even a moderate
swimmer. It will give you an idea, therefore, of the strange deficiency in these creatures,
when I tell you that none made the slightest attempt to rescue the weakly crying little thing
which was drowning before their eyes. When I realized this, I hurriedly slipped off my
clothes, and, wading in at a point lower down, I caught the poor mite and drew her safe to
land. A little rubbing of the limbs soon brought her round, and I had the satisfaction of
seeing she was all right before I left her. I had got to such a low estimate of her kind that I
did not expect any gratitude from her. In that, however, I was wrong.

"This happened in the morning. In the afternoon I met my little woman, as I believe it was,
as I was returning towards my centre from an exploration, and she received me with cries
of delight and presented me with a big garland of flowers evidently made for me and me
alone. The thing took my imagination. Very possibly I had been feeling desolate. At any rate
I did my best to display my appreciation of the gift. We were soon seated together in a little
stone arbour, engaged in conversation, chiefly of smiles. The creature's friendliness affected
me exactly as a child's might have done. We passed each other flowers, and she kissed my
hands. I did the same to hers. Then I tried talk, and found that her name was Weena,
which, though I don't know what it meant, somehow seemed appropriate enough. That was
the beginning of a queer friendship which lasted a week, and ended as I will tell you! "She
was exactly like a child. She wanted to be with me always. She tried to follow me
everywhere, and on my next journey out and about it went to my heart to tire her down,
and leave her at last, exhausted and calling after me rather plaintively. But the problems of
the world had to be mastered. I had not, I said to myself, come into the future to carry on a
miniature flirtation. Yet her distress when I left her was very great, her expostulations at
the parting were sometimes frantic, and I think, altogether, I had as much trouble as
comfort from her devotion. Nevertheless she was, somehow, a very great comfort. I
thought it was mere childish affection that made her cling to me. Until it was too late, I did
not clearly know what I had inflicted upon her when I left her. Nor until it was too late did I
clearly understand what she was to me. For, by merely seeming fond of me, and showing in
her weak, futile way that she cared for me, the little doll of a creature presently gave my
return to the neighbourhood of the White Sphinx almost the feeling of coming home; and I
would watch for her tiny figure of white and gold so soon as I came over the hill.

"It was from her, too, that I learned that fear had not yet left the world. She was fearless
enough in the daylight, and she had the oddest confidence in me; for once, in a foolish
moment, I made threatening grimaces at her, and she simply laughed at them. But she
dreaded the dark, dreaded shadows, dreaded black things. Darkness to her was the one
thing dreadful. It was a singularly passionate emotion, and it set me thinking and observing.
I discovered then, among other things, that these little people gathered into the great
houses after dark, and slept in droves. To enter upon them without a light was to put them
into a tumult of apprehension. I never found one out of doors, or one sleeping alone within
doors, after dark. Yet I was still such a blockhead that I missed the lesson of that fear, and
in spite of Weena's distress I insisted upon sleeping away from these slumbering multitudes.

"It troubled her greatly, but in the end her odd affection for me triumphed, and for five of
the nights of our acquaintance, including the last night of all, she slept with her head
pillowed on my arm. But my story slips away from me as I speak of her. It must have been
the night before her rescue that I was awakened about dawn. I had been restless, dreaming
most disagreeably that I was drowned, and that sea anemones were feeling over my face
with their soft palps. I woke with a start, and with an odd fancy that some greyish animal
had just rushed out of the chamber. I tried to get to sleep again, but I felt restless and
uncomfortable. It was that dim grey hour when things are just creeping out of darkness,
when everything is colourless and clear cut, and yet unreal. I got up, and went down into
the great hall, and so out upon the flagstones in front of the palace. I thought I would make
a virtue of necessity, and see the sunrise.

"The moon was setting, and the dying moonlight and the first pallor of dawn were mingled
in a ghastly half-light. The bushes were inky black, the ground a sombre grey, the sky
colourless and cheerless. And up the hill I thought I could see ghosts. There several times,
as I scanned the slope, I saw white figures. Twice I fancied I saw a solitary white, ape-like
creature running rather quickly up the hill, and once near the ruins I saw a leash of them
carrying some dark body. They moved hastily. I did not see what became of them. It
seemed that they vanished among the bushes. The dawn was still indistinct, you must
understand. I was feeling that chill, uncertain, early-morning feeling you may have known. I
doubted my eyes.

"As the eastern sky grew brighter, and the light of the day came on and its vivid colouring
returned upon the world once more, I scanned the view keenly. But I saw no vestige of my
white figures. They were mere creatures of the half-light. 'They must have been ghosts,' I
said; 'I wonder whence they dated.' For a queer notion of Grant Allen's came into my head,
and amused me. If each generation die and leave ghosts, he argued, the world at last will
get overcrowded with them. On that theory they would have grown innumerable some Eight
Hundred Thousand Years hence, and it was no great wonder to see four at once. But the
jest was unsatisfying, and I was thinking of these figures all the morning, until Weena's
rescue drove them out of my head. I associated them in some indefinite way with the white
animal I had startled in my first passionate search for the Time Machine. But Weena was a
pleasant substitute. Yet all the same, they were soon destined to take far deadlier
possession of my mind.
"I think I have said how much hotter than our own was the weather of this Golden Age. I
cannot account for it. It may be that the sun was hotter, or the earth nearer the sun. It is
usual to assume that the sun will go on cooling steadily in the future. But people, unfamiliar
with such speculations as those of the younger Darwin, forget that the planets must
ultimately fall back one by one into the parent body. As these catastrophes occur, the sun
will blaze with renewed energy; and it may be that some inner planet had suffered this fate.
Whatever the reason, the fact remains that the sun was very much hotter than we know it.

"Well, one very hot morning my fourth, I think, as I was seeking shelter from the heat and
glare in a colossal ruin near the great house where I slept and fed, there happened this
strange thing. Clambering among these heaps of masonry, I found a narrow gallery, whose
end and side windows were blocked by fallen masses of stone. By contrast with the
brilliancy outside, it seemed at first impenetrably dark to me. I entered it groping, for the
change from light to blackness made spots of colour swim before me. Suddenly I halted
spellbound. A pair of eyes, luminous by reflection against the daylight without, was
watching me out of the darkness.

"The old instinctive dread of wild beasts came upon me. I clenched my hands and
steadfastly looked into the glaring eyeballs. I was afraid to turn. Then the thought of the
absolute security in which humanity appeared to be living came to my mind. And then I
remembered that strange terror of the dark. Overcoming my fear to some extent, I
advanced a step and spoke. I will admit that my voice was harsh and ill-controlled. I put out
my hand and touched something soft. At once the eyes darted sideways, and something
white ran past me. I turned with my heart in my mouth, and saw a queer little ape-like
figure, its head held down in a peculiar manner, running across the sunlit space behind me.
It blundered against a block of granite, staggered aside, and in a moment was hidden in a
black shadow beneath another pile of ruined masonry.

"My impression of it is, of course, imperfect; but I know it was a dull white, and had strange
large greyish-red eyes; also that there was flaxen hair on its head and down its back. But as
I say, it went too fast for me to see distinctly. I cannot even say whether it ran on all fours,
or only with its forearms held very low. After an instant's pause I followed it into the second
heap of ruins. I could not find it at first; but, after a time in the profound obscurity, I came
upon one of those round well-like openings of which I have told you, half closed by a fallen
pillar. A sudden thought came to me. Could this Thing have vanished down the shaft? I lit a
match, and, looking down, I saw a small, white, moving creature, with large bright eyes
which regarded me steadfastly as it retreated. It made me shudder. It was so like a human
spider! It was clambering down the wall, and now I saw for the first time a number of metal
foot and hand rests forming a kind of ladder down the shaft. Then the light burned my
fingers and fell out of my hand, going out as it dropped, and when I had lit another the little
monster had disappeared.

"I do not know how long I sat peering down that well. It was not for some time that I could
succeed in persuading myself that the thing I had seen was human. But, gradually, the
truth dawned on me: that Man had not remained one species, but had differentiated into
two distinct animals: that my graceful children of the Upper-world were not the sole
descendants of our generation, but that this bleached, obscene, nocturnal Thing, which had
flashed before me, was also heir to all the ages.

"I thought of the flickering pillars and of my theory of an underground ventilation. I began
to suspect their true import. And what, I wondered, was this Lemur doing in my scheme of
a perfectly balanced organization? How was it related to the indolent serenity of the
beautiful Upper-worlders? And what was hidden down there, at the foot of that shaft? I sat
upon the edge of the well telling myself that, at any rate, there was nothing to fear, and
that there I must descend for the solution of my difficulties. And withal I was absolutely
afraid to go! As I hesitated, two of the beautiful Upper-world people came running in their
amorous sport across the daylight in the shadow. The male pursued the female, flinging
flowers at her as he ran.

"They seemed distressed to find me, my arm against the overturned pillar, peering down
the well. Apparently it was considered bad form to remark these apertures; for when I
pointed to this one, and tried to frame a question about it in their tongue, they were still
more visibly distressed and turned away. But they were interested by my matches, and I
struck some to amuse them. I tried them again about the well, and again I failed. So
presently I left them, meaning to go back to Weena, and see what I could get from her. But
my mind was already in revolution; my guesses and impressions were slipping and sliding
to a new adjustment. I had now a clue to the import of these wells, to the ventilating
towers, to the mystery of the ghosts; to say nothing of a hint at the meaning of the bronze
gates and the fate of the Time Machine! And very vaguely there came a suggestion towards
the solution of the economic problem that had puzzled me.

"Here was the new view. Plainly, this second species of Man was subterranean. There were
three circumstances in particular which made me think that its rare emergence above
ground was the outcome of a long-continued underground habit. In the first place, there
was the bleached look common in most animals that live largely in the dark, the white fish
of the Kentucky caves, for instance. Then, those large eyes, with that capacity for reflecting
light, are common features of nocturnal things witness the owl and the cat. And last of all,
that evident confusion in the sunshine, that hasty yet fumbling awkward flight towards dark
shadow, and that peculiar carriage of the head while in the light, all reinforced the theory of
an extreme sensitiveness of the retina.

"Beneath my feet, then, the earth must be tunnelled enormously, and these tunnellings
were the habitat of the new race. The presence of ventilating shafts and wells along the hill
slopes everywhere, in fact except along the river valley showed how universal were its
ramifications. What so natural, then, as to assume that it was in this artificial Underworld
that such work as was necessary to the comfort of the daylight race was done? The notion
was so plausible that I at once accepted it, and went on to assume the how of this splitting
of the human species. I dare say you will anticipate the shape of my theory; though, for
myself, I very soon felt that it fell far short of the truth.

"At first, proceeding from the problems of our own age, it seemed clear as daylight to me
that the gradual widening of the present merely temporary and social difference between
the Capitalist and the Labourer, was the key to the whole position. No doubt it will seem
grotesque enough to you, and wildly incredible! and yet even now there are existing
circumstances to point that way. There is a tendency to utilize underground space for the
less ornamental purposes of civilization; there is the Metropolitan Railway in London, for
instance, there are new electric railways, there are subways, there are underground
workrooms and restaurants, and they increase and multiply. Evidently, I thought, this
tendency had increased till Industry had gradually lost its birthright in the sky. I mean that
it had gone deeper and deeper into larger and ever larger underground factories, spending a
still-increasing amount of its time therein, till, in the end! Even now, does not an East-end
worker live in such artificial conditions as practically to be cut off from the natural surface of
the earth?

"Again, the exclusive tendency of richer people due, no doubt, to the increasing refinement
of their education, and the widening gulf between them and the rude violence of the poor, is
already leading to the closing, in their interest, of considerable portions of the surface of the
land. About London, for instance, perhaps half the prettier country is shut in against
intrusion. And this same widening gulf--which is due to the length and expense of the
higher educational process and the increased facilities for and temptations towards refined
habits on the part of the rich, will make that exchange between class and class, that
promotion by intermarriage which at present retards the splitting of our species along lines
of social stratification, less and less frequent. So, in the end, above ground you must have
the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Havenots, the
Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour. Once they were there,
they would no doubt have to pay rent, and not a little of it, for the ventilation of their
caverns; and if they refused, they would starve or be suffocated for arrears. Such of them
as were so constituted as to be miserable and rebellious would die; and, in the end, the
balance being permanent, the survivors would become as well adapted to the conditions of
underground life, and as happy in their way, as the Upper-world people were to theirs. As it
seemed to me, the refined beauty and the etiolated pallor followed naturally enough.

"The great triumph of Humanity I had dreamed of took a different shape in my mind. It had
been no such triumph of moral education and general co-operation as I had imagined.
Instead, I saw a real aristocracy, armed with a perfected science and working to a logical
conclusion the industrial system of to-day. Its triumph had not been simply a triumph over
Nature, but a triumph over Nature and the fellow-man. This, I must warn you, was my
theory at the time. I had no convenient cicerone in the pattern of the Utopian books. My
explanation may be absolutely wrong. I still think it is the most plausible one. But even on
this supposition the balanced civilization that was at last attained must have long since
passed its zenith, and was now far fallen into decay. The too-perfect security of the Upper-
worlders had led them to a slow movement of degeneration, to a general dwindling in size,
strength, and intelligence. That I could see clearly enough already. What had happened to
the Under-grounders I did not yet suspect; but from what I had seen of the Morlocks--that,
by the by, was the name by which these creatures were called--I could imagine that the
modification of the human type was even far more profound than among the 'Eloi,' the
beautiful race that I already knew.

"Then came troublesome doubts. Why had the Morlocks taken my Time Machine? For I felt
sure it was they who had taken it. Why, too, if the Eloi were masters, could they not restore
the machine to me? And why were they so terribly afraid of the dark? I proceeded, as I
have said, to question Weena about this Underworld, but here again I was disappointed. At
first she would not understand my questions, and presently she refused to answer them.
She shivered as though the topic was unendurable. And when I pressed her, perhaps a little
harshly, she burst into tears. They were the only tears, except my own, I ever saw in that
Golden Age. When I saw them I ceased abruptly to trouble about the Morlocks, and was
only concerned in banishing these signs of the human inheritance from Weena's eyes. And
very soon she was smiling and clapping her hands, while I solemnly burned a match.

VI

"It may seem odd to you, but it was two days before I could follow up the new-found clue in
what was manifestly the proper way. I felt a peculiar shrinking from those pallid bodies.
They were just the half-bleached colour of the worms and things one sees preserved in
spirit in a zoological museum. And they were filthily cold to the touch. Probably my
shrinking was largely due to the sympathetic influence of the Eloi, whose disgust of the
Morlocks I now began to appreciate.
"The next night I did not sleep well. Probably my health was a little disordered. I was
oppressed with perplexity and doubt. Once or twice I had a feeling of intense fear for which
I could perceive no definite reason. I remember creeping noiselessly into the great hall
where the little people were sleeping in the moonlight, that night Weena was among them,
and feeling reassured by their presence. It occurred to me even then, that in the course of a
few days the moon must pass through its last quarter, and the nights grow dark, when the
appearances of these unpleasant creatures from below, these whitened Lemurs, this new
vermin that had replaced the old, might be more abundant. And on both these days I had
the restless feeling of one who shirks an inevitable duty. I felt assured that the Time
Machine was only to be recovered by boldly penetrating these underground mysteries. Yet I
could not face the mystery. If only I had had a companion it would have been different. But
I was so horribly alone, and even to clamber down into the darkness of the well appalled
me. I don't know if you will understand my feeling, but I never felt quite safe at my back.

"It was this restlessness, this insecurity, perhaps, that drove me further and further afield in
my exploring expeditions. Going to the south-westward towards the rising country that is
now called Combe Wood, I observed far off, in the direction of nineteenth-century Banstead,
a vast green structure, different in character from any I had hitherto seen. It was larger
than the largest of the palaces or ruins I knew, and the facade had an Oriental look: the
face of it having the lustre, as well as the pale-green tint, a kind of bluish-green, of a
certain type of Chinese porcelain. This difference in aspect suggested a difference in use,
and I was minded to push on and explore. But the day was growing late, and I had come
upon the sight of the place after a long and tiring circuit; so I resolved to hold over the
adventure for the following day, and I returned to the welcome and the caresses of little
Weena. But next morning I perceived clearly enough that my curiosity regarding the Palace
of Green Porcelain was a piece of self-deception, to enable me to shirk, by another day, an
experience I dreaded. I resolved I would make the descent without further waste of time,
and started out in the early morning towards a well near the ruins of granite and aluminium.

"Little Weena ran with me. She danced beside me to the well, but when she saw me lean
over the mouth and look downward, she seemed strangely disconcerted. 'Good-bye, Little
Weena,' I said, kissing her; and then putting her down, I began to feel over the parapet for
the climbing hooks. Rather hastily, I may as well confess, for I feared my courage might
leak away! At first she watched me in amazement. Then she gave a most piteous cry, and
running to me, she began to pull at me with her little hands. I think her opposition nerved
me rather to proceed. I shook her off, perhaps a little roughly, and in another moment I
was in the throat of the well. I saw her agonized face over the parapet, and smiled to
reassure her. Then I had to look down at the unstable hooks to which I clung.

"I had to clamber down a shaft of perhaps two hundred yards. The descent was effected by
means of metallic bars projecting from the sides of the well, and these being adapted to the
needs of a creature much smaller and lighter than myself, I was speedily cramped and
fatigued by the descent. And not simply fatigued! One of the bars bent suddenly under my
weight, and almost swung me off into the blackness beneath. For a moment I hung by one
hand, and after that experience I did not dare to rest again. Though my arms and back
were presently acutely painful, I went on clambering down the sheer descent with as quick
a motion as possible. Glancing upward, I saw the aperture, a small blue disk, in which a star
was visible, while little Weena's head showed as a round black projection. The thudding
sound of a machine below grew louder and more oppressive. Everything save that little disk
above was profoundly dark, and when I looked up again Weena had disappeared.

"I was in an agony of discomfort. I had some thought of trying to go up the shaft again, and
leave the Underworld alone. But even while I turned this over in my mind I continued to
descend. At last, with intense relief, I saw dimly coming up, a foot to the right of me, a
slender loophole in the wall. Swinging myself in, I found it was the aperture of a narrow
horizontal tunnel in which I could lie down and rest. It was not too soon. My arms ached,
my back was cramped, and I was trembling with the prolonged terror of a fall. Besides this,
the unbroken darkness had had a distressing effect upon my eyes. The air was full of the
throb and hum of machinery pumping air down the shaft.

"I do not know how long I lay. I was roused by a soft hand touching my face. Starting up in
the darkness I snatched at my matches and, hastily striking one, I saw three stooping white
creatures similar to the one I had seen above ground in the ruin, hastily retreating before
the light. Living, as they did, in what appeared to me impenetrable darkness, their eyes
were abnormally large and sensitive, just as are the pupils of the abysmal fishes, and they
reflected the light in the same way. I have no doubt they could see me in that rayless
obscurity, and they did not seem to have any fear of me apart from the light. But, so soon
as I struck a match in order to see them, they fled incontinently, vanishing into dark gutters
and tunnels, from which their eyes glared at me in the strangest fashion.

"I tried to call to them, but the language they had was apparently different from that of the
Upper-world people; so that I was left to my own unaided efforts, and the thought of flight
before exploration was even then in my mind. But I said to myself, "You are in for it now,"
and, feeling my way along the tunnel, I found the noise of machinery grow louder. Presently
the walls fell away from me, and I came to a large open space, and striking another match,
saw that I had entered a vast arched cavern, which stretched into utter darkness beyond
the range of my light. The view I had of it was as much as one could see in the burning of a
match.

"Necessarily my memory is vague. Great shapes like big machines rose out of the dimness,
and cast grotesque black shadows, in which dim spectral Morlocks sheltered from the glare.
The place, by the by, was very stuffy and oppressive, and the faint halitus of freshly-shed
blood was in the air. Some way down the central vista was a little table of white metal, laid
with what seemed a meal. The Morlocks at any rate were carnivorous! Even at the time, I
remember wondering what large animal could have survived to furnish the red joint I saw.
It was all very indistinct: the heavy smell, the big unmeaning shapes, the obscene figures
lurking in the shadows, and only waiting for the darkness to come at me again! Then the
match burned down, and stung my fingers, and fell, a wriggling red spot in the blackness.

"I have thought since how particularly ill-equipped I was for such an experience. When I
had started with the Time Machine, I had started with the absurd assumption that the men
of the Future would certainly be infinitely ahead of ourselves in all their appliances. I had
come without arms, without medicine, without anything to smoke--at times I missed
tobacco frightfully--even without enough matches. If only I had thought of a Kodak! I could
have flashed that glimpse of the Underworld in a second, and examined it at leisure. But, as
it was, I stood there with only the weapons and the powers that Nature had endowed me
with hands, feet, and teeth; these, and four safety matches that still remained to me.

"I was afraid to push my way in among all this machinery in the dark, and it was only with
my last glimpse of light I discovered that my store of matches had run low. It had never
occurred to me until that moment that there was any need to economize them, and I had
wasted almost half the box in astonishing the Upper-worlders, to whom fire was a novelty.
Now, as I say, I had four left, and while I stood in the dark, a hand touched mine, lank
fingers came feeling over my face, and I was sensible of a peculiar unpleasant odour. I
fancied I heard the breathing of a crowd of those dreadful little beings about me. I felt the
box of matches in my hand being gently disengaged, and other hands behind me plucking
at my clothing. The sense of these unseen creatures examining me was indescribably
unpleasant. The sudden realization of my ignorance of their ways of thinking and doing
came home to me very vividly in the darkness. I shouted at them as loudly as I could. They
started away, and then I could feel them approaching me again. They clutched at me more
boldly, whispering odd sounds to each other. I shivered violently, and shouted again rather
discordantly. This time they were not so seriously alarmed, and they made a queer laughing
noise as they came back at me. I will confess I was horribly frightened. I determined to
strike another match and escape under the protection of its glare. I did so, and eking out
the flicker with a scrap of paper from my pocket, I made good my retreat to the narrow
tunnel. But I had scarce entered this when my light was blown out and in the blackness I
could hear the Morlocks rustling like wind among leaves, and pattering like the rain, as they
hurried after me.

"In a moment I was clutched by several hands, and there was no mistaking that they were
trying to haul me back. I struck another light, and waved it in their dazzled faces. You can
scarce imagine how nauseatingly inhuman they looked, those pale, chinless faces and great,
lidless, pinkish-grey eyes! as they stared in their blindness and bewilderment. But I did not
stay to look, I promise you: I retreated again, and when my second match had ended, I
struck my third. It had almost burned through when I reached the opening into the shaft. I
lay down on the edge, for the throb of the great pump below made me giddy. Then I felt
sideways for the projecting hooks, and, as I did so, my feet were grasped from behind, and
I was violently tugged backward. I lit my last match . . . and it incontinently went out. But I
had my hand on the climbing bars now, and, kicking violently, I disengaged myself from the
clutches of the Morlocks and was speedily clambering up the shaft, while they stayed
peering and blinking up at me: all but one little wretch who followed me for some way, and
well-nigh secured my boot as a trophy.

"That climb seemed interminable to me. With the last twenty or thirty feet of it a deadly
nausea came upon me. I had the greatest difficulty in keeping my hold. The last few yards
was a frightful struggle against this faintness. Several times my head swam, and I felt all
the sensations of falling. At last, however, I got over the well-mouth somehow, and
staggered out of the ruin into the blinding sunlight. I fell upon my face. Even the soil smelt
sweet and clean. Then I remember Weena kissing my hands and ears, and the voices of
others among the Eloi. Then, for a time, I was insensible.

VII

"Now, indeed, I seemed in a worse case than before. Hitherto, except during my night's
anguish at the loss of the Time Machine, I had felt a sustaining hope of ultimate escape, but
that hope was staggered by these new discoveries. Hitherto I had merely thought myself
impeded by the childish simplicity of the little people, and by some unknown forces which I
had only to understand to overcome; but there was an altogether new element in the
sickening quality of the Morlocks, a something inhuman and malign. Instinctively I loathed
them. Before, I had felt as a man might feel who had fallen into a pit: my concern was with
the pit and how to get out of it. Now I felt like a beast in a trap, whose enemy would come
upon him soon.

"The enemy I dreaded may surprise you. It was the darkness of the new moon. Weena had
put this into my head by some at first incomprehensible remarks about the Dark Nights. It
was not now such a very difficult problem to guess what the coming Dark Nights might
mean. The moon was on the wane: each night there was a longer interval of darkness. And
I now understood to some slight degree at least the reason of the fear of the little Upper-
world people for the dark. I wondered vaguely what foul villainy it might be that the
Morlocks did under the new moon. I felt pretty sure now that my second hypothesis was all
wrong. The Upper-world people might once have been the favoured aristocracy, and the
Morlocks their mechanical servants: but that had long since passed away. The two species
that had resulted from the evolution of man were sliding down towards, or had already
arrived at, an altogether new relationship. The Eloi, like the Carolvingian kings, had decayed
to a mere beautiful futility. They still possessed the earth on sufferance: since the Morlocks,
subterranean for innumerable generations, had come at last to find the daylit surface
intolerable. And the Morlocks made their garments, I inferred, and maintained them in their
habitual needs, perhaps through the survival of an old habit of service. They did it as a
standing horse paws with his foot, or as a man enjoys killing animals in sport: because
ancient and departed necessities had impressed it on the organism. But, clearly, the old
order was already in part reversed. The Nemesis of the delicate ones was creeping on
apace. Ages ago, thousands of generations ago, man had thrust his brother man out of the
ease and the sunshine. And now that brother was coming back changed! Already the Eloi
had begun to learn one old lesson anew. They were becoming reacquainted with Fear. And
suddenly there came into my head the memory of the meat I had seen in the Underworld. It
seemed odd how it floated into my mind: not stirred up as it were by the current of my
meditations, but coming in almost like a question from outside. I tried to recall the form of
it. I had a vague sense of something familiar, but I could not tell what it was at the time.

"Still, however helpless the little people in the presence of their mysterious Fear, I was
differently constituted. I came out of this age of ours, this ripe prime of the human race,
when Fear does not paralyse and mystery has lost its terrors. I at least would defend
myself. Without further delay I determined to make myself arms and a fastness where I
might sleep. With that refuge as a base, I could face this strange world with some of that
confidence I had lost in realizing to what creatures night by night I lay exposed. I felt I
could never sleep again until my bed was secure from them. I shuddered with horror to
think how they must already have examined me.

"I wandered during the afternoon along the valley of the Thames, but found nothing that
commended itself to my mind as inaccessible. All the buildings and trees seemed easily
practicable to such dexterous climbers as the Morlocks, to judge by their wells, must be.
Then the tall pinnacles of the Palace of Green Porcelain and the polished gleam of its walls
came back to my memory; and in the evening, taking Weena like a child upon my shoulder,
I went up the hills towards the south-west. The distance, I had reckoned, was seven or
eight miles, but it must have been nearer eighteen. I had first seen the place on a moist
afternoon when distances are deceptively diminished. In addition, the heel of one of my
shoes was loose, and a nail was working through the sole they were comfortable old shoes I
wore about indoors, so that I was lame. And it was already long past sunset when I came in
sight of the palace, silhouetted black against the pale yellow of the sky.

"Weena had been hugely delighted when I began to carry her, but after a while she desired
me to let her down, and ran along by the side of me, occasionally darting off on either hand
to pick flowers to stick in my pockets. My pockets had always puzzled Weena, but at the last
she had concluded that they were an eccentric kind of vase for floral decoration. At least
she utilized them for that purpose. And that reminds me! In changing my jacket I found . .
."

The Time Traveller paused, put his hand into his pocket, and silently placed two withered
flowers, not unlike very large white mallows, upon the little table. Then he resumed his
narrative.
"As the hush of evening crept over the world and we proceeded over the hill crest towards
Wimbledon, Weena grew tired and wanted to return to the house of grey stone. But I
pointed out the distant pinnacles of the Palace of Green Porcelain to her, and contrived to
make her understand that we were seeking a refuge there from her Fear. You know that
great pause that comes upon things before the dusk? Even the breeze stops in the trees. To
me there is always an air of expectation about that evening stillness. The sky was clear,
remote, and empty save for a few horizontal bars far down in the sunset. Well, that night
the expectation took the colour of my fears. In that darkling calm my senses seemed
preternaturally sharpened. I fancied I could even feel the hollowness of the ground beneath
my feet: could, indeed, almost see through it the Morlocks on their ant-hill going hither and
thither and waiting for the dark. In my excitement I fancied that they would receive my
invasion of their burrows as a declaration of war. And why had they taken my Time
Machine?

"So we went on in the quiet, and the twilight deepened into night. The clear blue of the
distance faded, and one star after another came out. The ground grew dim and the trees
black. Weena's fears and her fatigue grew upon her. I took her in my arms and talked to
her and caressed her. Then, as the darkness grew deeper, she put her arms round my neck,
and, closing her eyes, tightly pressed her face against my shoulder. So we went down a
long slope into a valley, and there in the dimness I almost walked into a little river. This I
waded, and went up the opposite side of the valley, past a number of sleeping houses, and
by a statue, a Faun, or some such figure, minus the head. Here too were acacias. So far I
had seen nothing of the Morlocks, but it was yet early in the night, and the darker hours
before the old moon rose were still to come.

"From the brow of the next hill I saw a thick wood spreading wide and black before me. I
hesitated at this. I could see no end to it, either to the right or the left. Feeling tired--my
feet, in particular, were very sore--I carefully lowered Weena from my shoulder as I halted,
and sat down upon the turf. I could no longer see the Palace of Green Porcelain, and I was
in doubt of my direction. I looked into the thickness of the wood and thought of what it
might hide. Under that dense tangle of branches one would be out of sight of the stars.
Even were there no other lurking danger--a danger I did not care to let my imagination
loose upon--there would still be all the roots to stumble over and the tree-boles to strike
against.

"I was very tired, too, after the excitements of the day; so I decided that I would not face
it, but would pass the night upon the open hill.

"Weena, I was glad to find, was fast asleep. I carefully wrapped her in my jacket, and sat
down beside her to wait for the moonrise. The hillside was quiet and deserted, but from the
black of the wood there came now and then a stir of living things. Above me shone the
stars, for the night was very clear. I felt a certain sense of friendly comfort in their
twinkling. All the old constellations had gone from the sky, however: that slow movement
which is imperceptible in a hundred human lifetimes, had long since rearranged them in
unfamiliar groupings. But the Milky Way, it seemed to me, was still the same tattered
streamer of star-dust as of yore. Southward (as I judged it) was a very bright red star that
was new to me; it was even more splendid than our own green Sirius. And amid all these
scintillating points of light one bright planet shone kindly and steadily like the face of an old
friend.

"Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial
life. I thought of their unfathomable distance, and the slow inevitable drift of their
movements out of the unknown past into the unknown future. I thought of the great
precessional cycle that the pole of the earth describes. Only forty times had that silent
revolution occurred during all the years that I had traversed. And during these few
revolutions all the activity, all the traditions, the complex organizations, the nations,
languages, literatures, aspirations, even the mere memory of Man as I knew him, had been
swept out of existence. Instead were these frail creatures who had forgotten their high
ancestry, and the white Things of which I went in terror. Then I thought of the Great Fear
that was between the two species, and for the first time, with a sudden shiver, came the
clear knowledge of what the meat I had seen might be. Yet it was too horrible! I looked at
little Weena sleeping beside me, her face white and starlike under the stars, and forthwith
dismissed the thought.

"Through that long night I held my mind off the Morlocks as well as I could, and whiled
away the time by trying to fancy I could find signs of the old constellations in the new
confusion. The sky kept very clear, except for a hazy cloud or so. No doubt I dozed at
times. Then, as my vigil wore on, came a faintness in the eastward sky, like the reflection of
some colourless fire, and the old moon rose, thin and peaked and white. And close behind,
and overtaking it, and overflowing it, the dawn came, pale at first, and then growing pink
and warm. No Morlocks had approached us. Indeed, I had seen none upon the hill that
night. And in the confidence of renewed day it almost seemed to me that my fear had been
unreasonable. I stood up and found my foot with the loose heel swollen at the ankle and
painful under the heel; so I sat down again, took off my shoes, and flung them away.

"I awakened Weena, and we went down into the wood, now green and pleasant instead of
black and forbidding. We found some fruit wherewith to break our fast. We soon met others
of the dainty ones, laughing and dancing in the sunlight as though there was no such thing
in nature as the night. And then I thought once more of the meat that I had seen. I felt
assured now of what it was, and from the bottom of my heart I pitied this last feeble rill
from the great flood of humanity. Clearly, at some time in the Long-Ago of human decay
the Morlocks' food had run short. Possibly they had lived on rats and suchlike vermin. Even
now man is far less discriminating and exclusive in his food than he was far less than any
monkey. His prejudice against human flesh is no deep-seated instinct. And so these
inhuman sons of men! I tried to look at the thing in a scientific spirit. After all, they were
less human and more remote than our cannibal ancestors of three or four thousand years
ago. And the intelligence that would have made this state of things a torment had gone.
Why should I trouble myself? These Eloi were mere fatted cattle, which the ant-like
Morlocks preserved and preyed upon probably saw to the breeding of. And there was Weena
dancing at my side!

"Then I tried to preserve myself from the horror that was coming upon me, by regarding it
as a rigorous punishment of human selfishness. Man had been content to live in ease and
delight upon the labours of his fellow-man, had taken Necessity as his watchword and
excuse, and in the fullness of time Necessity had come home to him. I even tried a Carlyle-
like scorn of this wretched aristocracy in decay. But this attitude of mind was impossible.
However great their intellectual degradation, the Eloi had kept too much of the human form
not to claim my sympathy, and to make me perforce a sharer in their degradation and their
Fear.

"I had at that time very vague ideas as to the course I should pursue. My first was to secure
some safe place of refuge, and to make myself such arms of metal or stone as I could
contrive. That necessity was immediate. In the next place, I hoped to procure some means
of fire, so that I should have the weapon of a torch at hand, for nothing, I knew, would be
more efficient against these Morlocks. Then I wanted to arrange some contrivance to break
open the doors of bronze under the White Sphinx. I had in mind a battering-ram. I had a
persuasion that if I could enter those doors and carry a blaze of light before me I should
discover the Time Machine and escape. I could not imagine the Morlocks were strong
enough to move it far away. Weena I had resolved to bring with me to our own time. And
turning such schemes over in my mind I pursued our way towards the building which my
fancy had chosen as our dwelling.

VIII

"I found the Palace of Green Porcelain, when we approached it about noon, deserted and
falling into ruin. Only ragged vestiges of glass remained in its windows, and great sheets of
the green facing had fallen away from the corroded metallic framework. It lay very high
upon a turfy down, and looking north-eastward before I entered it, I was surprised to see a
large estuary, or even creek, where I judged Wandsworth and Battersea must once have
been. I thought then--though I never followed up the thought--of what might have
happened, or might be happening, to the living things in the sea.

"The material of the Palace proved on examination to be indeed porcelain, and along the
face of it I saw an inscription in some unknown character. I thought, rather foolishly, that
Weena might help me to interpret this, but I only learned that the bare idea of writing had
never entered her head. She always seemed to me, I fancy, more human than she was,
perhaps because her affection was so human.

"Within the big valves of the door--which were open and broken--we found, instead of the
customary hall, a long gallery lit by many side windows. At the first glance I was reminded
of a museum. The tiled floor was thick with dust, and a remarkable array of miscellaneous
objects was shrouded in the same grey covering. Then I perceived, standing strange and
gaunt in the centre of the hall, what was clearly the lower part of a huge skeleton. I
recognized by the oblique feet that it was some extinct creature after the fashion of the
Megatherium. The skull and the upper bones lay beside it in the thick dust, and in one
place, where rain-water had dropped through a leak in the roof, the thing itself had been
worn away. Further in the gallery was the huge skeleton barrel of a Brontosaurus. My
museum hypothesis was confirmed. Going towards the side I found what appeared to be
sloping shelves, and clearing away the thick dust, I found the old familiar glass cases of our
own time. But they must have been air-tight to judge from the fair preservation of some of
their contents.

"Clearly we stood among the ruins of some latter-day South Kensington! Here, apparently,
was the Paleontological Section, and a very splendid array of fossils it must have been,
though the inevitable process of decay that had been staved off for a time, and had,
through the extinction of bacteria and fungi, lost ninety-nine hundredths of its force, was
nevertheless, with extreme sureness if with extreme slowness at work again upon all its
treasures. Here and there I found traces of the little people in the shape of rare fossils
broken to pieces or threaded in strings upon reeds. And the cases had in some instances
been bodily removed--by the Morlocks as I judged. The place was very silent. The thick dust
deadened our footsteps. Weena, who had been rolling a sea urchin down the sloping glass
of a case, presently came, as I stared about me, and very quietly took my hand and stood
beside me.

"And at first I was so much surprised by this ancient monument of an intellectual age, that I
gave no thought to the possibilities it presented. Even my preoccupation about the Time
Machine receded a little from my mind.
"To judge from the size of the place, this Palace of Green Porcelain had a great deal more in
it than a Gallery of Paleontology; possibly historical galleries; it might be, even a library! To
me, at least in my present circumstances, these would be vastly more interesting than this
spectacle of old-time geology in decay. Exploring, I found another short gallery running
transversely to the first. This appeared to be devoted to minerals, and the sight of a block
of sulphur set my mind running on gunpowder. But I could find no saltpetre; indeed, no
nitrates of any kind. Doubtless they had deliquesced ages ago. Yet the sulphur hung in my
mind, and set up a train of thinking. As for the rest of the contents of that gallery, though
on the whole they were the best preserved of all I saw, I had little interest. I am no
specialist in mineralogy, and I went on down a very ruinous aisle running parallel to the first
hall I had entered. Apparently this section had been devoted to natural history, but
everything had long since passed out of recognition. A few shrivelled and blackened vestiges
of what had once been stuffed animals, desiccated mummies in jars that had once held
spirit, a brown dust of departed plants: that was all! I was sorry for that, because I should
have been glad to trace the patent readjustments by which the conquest of animated nature
had been attained. Then we came to a gallery of simply colossal proportions, but singularly
ill-lit, the floor of it running downward at a slight angle from the end at which I entered. At
intervals white globes hung from the ceiling--many of them cracked and smashed--which
suggested that originally the place had been artificially lit. Here I was more in my element,
for rising on either side of me were the huge bulks of big machines, all greatly corroded and
many broken down, but some still fairly complete. You know I have a certain weakness for
mechanism, and I was inclined to linger among these; the more so as for the most part
they had the interest of puzzles, and I could make only the vaguest guesses at what they
were for. I fancied that if I could solve their puzzles I should find myself in possession of
powers that might be of use against the Morlocks.

"Suddenly Weena came very close to my side. So suddenly that she startled me. Had it not
been for her I do not think I should have noticed that the floor of the gallery sloped at all.

[Footnote: It may be, of course, that the floor did not slope, but that the museum was built
into the side of a hill. ED.]

The end I had come in at was quite above ground, and was lit by rare slit-like windows. As
you went down the length, the ground came up against these windows, until at last there
was a pit like the 'area' of a London house before each, and only a narrow line of daylight at
the top. I went slowly along, puzzling about the machines, and had been too intent upon
them to notice the gradual diminution of the light, until Weena's increasing apprehensions
drew my attention. Then I saw that the gallery ran down at last into a thick darkness. I
hesitated, and then, as I looked round me, I saw that the dust was less abundant and its
surface less even. Further away towards the dimness, it appeared to be broken by a number
of small narrow footprints. My sense of the immediate presence of the Morlocks revived at
that. I felt that I was wasting my time in the academic examination of machinery. I called to
mind that it was already far advanced in the afternoon, and that I had still no weapon, no
refuge, and no means of making a fire. And then down in the remote blackness of the
gallery I heard a peculiar pattering, and the same odd noises I had heard down the well.

"I took Weena's hand. Then, struck with a sudden idea, I left her and turned to a machine
from which projected a lever not unlike those in a signal-box. Clambering upon the stand,
and grasping this lever in my hands, I put all my weight upon it sideways. Suddenly Weena,
deserted in the central aisle, began to whimper. I had judged the strength of the lever
pretty correctly, for it snapped after a minute's strain, and I rejoined her with a mace in my
hand more than sufficient, I judged, for any Morlock skull I might encounter. And I longed
very much to kill a Morlock or so. Very inhuman, you may think, to want to go killing one's
own descendants! But it was impossible, somehow, to feel any humanity in the things. Only
my disinclination to leave Weena, and a persuasion that if I began to slake my thirst for
murder my Time Machine might suffer, restrained me from going straight down the gallery
and killing the brutes I heard.

"Well, mace in one hand and Weena in the other, I went out of that gallery and into another
and still larger one, which at the first glance reminded me of a military chapel hung with
tattered flags. The brown and charred rags that hung from the sides of it, I presently
recognized as the decaying vestiges of books. They had long since dropped to pieces, and
every semblance of print had left them. But here and there were warped boards and
cracked metallic clasps that told the tale well enough. Had I been a literary man I might,
perhaps, have moralized upon the futility of all ambition. But as it was, the thing that struck
me with keenest force was the enormous waste of labour to which this sombre wilderness of
rotting paper testified. At the time I will confess that I thought chiefly of the Philosophical
Transactions and my own seventeen papers upon physical optics.

"Then, going up a broad staircase, we came to what may once have been a gallery of
technical chemistry. And here I had not a little hope of useful discoveries. Except at one end
where the roof had collapsed, this gallery was well preserved. I went eagerly to every
unbroken case. And at last, in one of the really air-tight cases, I found a box of matches.
Very eagerly I tried them. They were perfectly good. They were not even damp. I turned to
Weena. 'Dance,' I cried to her in her own tongue. For now I had a weapon indeed against
the horrible creatures we feared. And so, in that derelict museum, upon the thick soft
carpeting of dust, to Weena's huge delight, I solemnly performed a kind of composite
dance, whistling The Land of the Leal as cheerfully as I could. In part it was a modest
cancan, in part a step dance, in part a skirt dance (so far as my tail-coat permitted), and in
part original. For I am naturally inventive, as you know.

"Now, I still think that for this box of matches to have escaped the wear of time for
immemorial years was a most strange, as for me it was a most fortunate thing. Yet, oddly
enough, I found a far unlikelier substance, and that was camphor. I found it in a sealed jar,
that by chance, I suppose, had been really hermetically sealed. I fancied at first that it was
paraffin wax, and smashed the glass accordingly. But the odour of camphor was
unmistakable. In the universal decay this volatile substance had chanced to survive,
perhaps through many thousands of centuries. It reminded me of a sepia painting I had
once seen done from the ink of a fossil Belemnite that must have perished and become
fossilized millions of years ago. I was about to throw it away, but I remembered that it was
inflammable and burned with a good bright flame was, in fact, an excellent candle and I put
it in my pocket. I found no explosives, however, nor any means of breaking down the
bronze doors. As yet my iron crowbar was the most helpful thing I had chanced upon.
Nevertheless I left that gallery greatly elated.

"I cannot tell you all the story of that long afternoon. It would require a great effort of
memory to recall my explorations in at all the proper order. I remember a long gallery of
rusting stands of arms, and how I hesitated between my crowbar and a hatchet or a sword.
I could not carry both, however, and my bar of iron promised best against the bronze gates.
There were numbers of guns, pistols, and rifles. The most were masses of rust, but many
were of some new metal, and still fairly sound. But any cartridges or powder there may
once have been had rotted into dust. One corner I saw was charred and shattered; perhaps,
I thought, by an explosion among the specimens. In another place was a vast array of idols-
-Polynesian, Mexican, Grecian, Phoenician, every country on earth I should think. And here,
yielding to an irresistible impulse, I wrote my name upon the nose of a steatite monster
from South America that particularly took my fancy.

"As the evening drew on, my interest waned. I went through gallery after gallery, dusty,
silent, often ruinous, the exhibits sometimes mere heaps of rust and lignite, sometimes
fresher. In one place I suddenly found myself near the model of a tin-mine, and then by the
merest accident I discovered, in an air-tight case, two dynamite cartridges! I shouted
'Eureka!' and smashed the case with joy. Then came a doubt. I hesitated. Then, selecting a
little side gallery, I made my essay. I never felt such a disappointment as I did in waiting
five, ten, fifteen minutes for an explosion that never came. Of course the things were
dummies, as I might have guessed from their presence. I really believe that had they not
been so, I should have rushed off incontinently and blown Sphinx, bronze doors, and (as it
proved) my chances of finding the Time Machine, all together into nonexistence.

"It was after that, I think, that we came to a little open court within the palace. It was
turfed, and had three fruit-trees. So we rested and refreshed ourselves. Towards sunset I
began to consider our position. Night was creeping upon us, and my inaccessible hiding-
place had still to be found. But that troubled me very little now. I had in my possession a
thing that was, perhaps, the best of all defences against the Morlocks--I had matches! I had
the camphor in my pocket, too, if a blaze were needed. It seemed to me that the best thing
we could do would be to pass the night in the open, protected by a fire. In the morning
there was the getting of the Time Machine. Towards that, as yet, I had only my iron mace.
But now, with my growing knowledge, I felt very differently towards those bronze doors. Up
to this, I had refrained from forcing them, largely because of the mystery on the other side.
They had never impressed me as being very strong, and I hoped to find my bar of iron not
altogether inadequate for the work.

IX

"We emerged from the palace while the sun was still in part above the horizon. I was
determined to reach the White Sphinx early the next morning, and ere the dusk I purposed
pushing through the woods that had stopped me on the previous journey. My plan was to
go as far as possible that night, and then, building a fire, to sleep in the protection of its
glare. Accordingly, as we went along I gathered any sticks or dried grass I saw, and
presently had my arms full of such litter. Thus loaded, our progress was slower than I had
anticipated, and besides Weena was tired. And I began to suffer from sleepiness too; so
that it was full night before we reached the wood. Upon the shrubby hill of its edge Weena
would have stopped, fearing the darkness before us; but a singular sense of impending
calamity, that should indeed have served me as a warning, drove me onward. I had been
without sleep for a night and two days, and I was feverish and irritable. I felt sleep coming
upon me, and the Morlocks with it.

"While we hesitated, among the black bushes behind us, and dim against their blackness, I
saw three crouching figures. There was scrub and long grass all about us, and I did not feel
safe from their insidious approach. The forest, I calculated, was rather less than a mile
across. If we could get through it to the bare hill-side, there, as it seemed to me, was an
altogether safer resting-place; I thought that with my matches and my camphor I could
contrive to keep my path illuminated through the woods. Yet it was evident that if I was to
flourish matches with my hands I should have to abandon my firewood; so, rather
reluctantly, I put it down. And then it came into my head that I would amaze our friends
behind by lighting it. I was to discover the atrocious folly of this proceeding, but it came to
my mind as an ingenious move for covering our retreat.
"I don't know if you have ever thought what a rare thing flame must be in the absence of
man and in a temperate climate. The sun's heat is rarely strong enough to burn, even when
it is focused by dewdrops, as is sometimes the case in more tropical districts. Lightning may
blast and blacken, but it rarely gives rise to widespread fire. Decaying vegetation may
occasionally smoulder with the heat of its fermentation, but this rarely results in flame. In
this decadence, too, the art of fire-making had been forgotten on the earth. The red
tongues that went licking up my heap of wood were an altogether new and strange thing to
Weena.

"She wanted to run to it and play with it. I believe she would have cast herself into it had I
not restrained her. But I caught her up, and in spite of her struggles, plunged boldly before
me into the wood. For a little way the glare of my fire lit the path. Looking back presently, I
could see, through the crowded stems, that from my heap of sticks the blaze had spread to
some bushes adjacent, and a curved line of fire was creeping up the grass of the hill. I
laughed at that, and turned again to the dark trees before me. It was very black, and
Weena clung to me convulsively, but there was still, as my eyes grew accustomed to the
darkness, sufficient light for me to avoid the stems. Overhead it was simply black, except
where a gap of remote blue sky shone down upon us here and there. I struck none of my
matches because I had no hand free. Upon my left arm I carried my little one, in my right
hand I had my iron bar.

"For some way I heard nothing but the crackling twigs under my feet, the faint rustle of the
breeze above, and my own breathing and the throb of the blood-vessels in my ears. Then I
seemed to know of a pattering about me. I pushed on grimly. The pattering grew more
distinct, and then I caught the same queer sound and voices I had heard in the Underworld.
There were evidently several of the Morlocks, and they were closing in upon me. Indeed, in
another minute I felt a tug at my coat, then something at my arm. And Weena shivered
violently, and became quite still.

"It was time for a match. But to get one I must put her down. I did so, and, as I fumbled
with my pocket, a struggle began in the darkness about my knees, perfectly silent on her
part and with the same peculiar cooing sounds from the Morlocks. Soft little hands, too,
were creeping over my coat and back, touching even my neck. Then the match scratched
and fizzed. I held it flaring, and saw the white backs of the Morlocks in flight amid the trees.
I hastily took a lump of camphor from my pocket, and prepared to light it as soon as the
match should wane. Then I looked at Weena. She was lying clutching my feet and quite
motionless, with her face to the ground. With a sudden fright I stooped to her. She seemed
scarcely to breathe. I lit the block of camphor and flung it to the ground, and as it split and
flared up and drove back the Morlocks and the shadows, I knelt down and lifted her. The
wood behind seemed full of the stir and murmur of a great company!

"She seemed to have fainted. I put her carefully upon my shoulder and rose to push on, and
then there came a horrible realization. In maneuvering with my matches and Weena, I had
turned myself about several times, and now I had not the faintest idea in what direction lay
my path. For all I knew, I might be facing back towards the Palace of Green Porcelain. I
found myself in a cold sweat. I had to think rapidly what to do. I determined to build a fire
and encamp where we were. I put Weena, still motionless, down upon a turfy bole, and very
hastily, as my first lump of camphor waned, I began collecting sticks and leaves. Here and
there out of the darkness round me the Morlocks' eyes shone like carbuncles.

"The camphor flickered and went out. I lit a match, and as I did so, two white forms that
had been approaching Weena dashed hastily away. One was so blinded by the light that he
came straight for me, and I felt his bones grind under the blow of my fist. He gave a whoop
of dismay, staggered a little way, and fell down. I lit another piece of camphor, and went on
gathering my bonfire. Presently I noticed how dry was some of the foliage above me, for
since my arrival on the Time Machine, a matter of a week, no rain had fallen. So, instead of
casting about among the trees for fallen twigs, I began leaping up and dragging down
branches. Very soon I had a choking smoky fire of green wood and dry sticks, and could
economize my camphor. Then I turned to where Weena lay beside my iron mace. I tried
what I could to revive her, but she lay like one dead. I could not even satisfy myself
whether or not she breathed.

"Now, the smoke of the fire beat over towards me, and it must have made me heavy of a
sudden. Moreover, the vapour of camphor was in the air. My fire would not need
replenishing for an hour or so. I felt very weary after my exertion, and sat down. The wood,
too, was full of a slumbrous murmur that I did not understand. I seemed just to nod and
open my eyes. But all was dark, and the Morlocks had their hands upon me. Flinging off
their clinging fingers I hastily felt in my pocket for the match-box, and it had gone! Then
they gripped and closed with me again. In a moment I knew what had happened. I had
slept, and my fire had gone out, and the bitterness of death came over my soul. The forest
seemed full of the smell of burning wood. I was caught by the neck, by the hair, by the
arms, and pulled down. It was indescribably horrible in the darkness to feel all these soft
creatures heaped upon me. I felt as if I was in a monstrous spider's web. I was
overpowered, and went down. I felt little teeth nipping at my neck. I rolled over, and as I
did so my hand came against my iron lever. It gave me strength. I struggled up, shaking
the human rats from me, and, holding the bar short, I thrust where I judged their faces
might be. I could feel the succulent giving of flesh and bone under my blows, and for a
moment I was free.

"The strange exultation that so often seems to accompany hard fighting came upon me. I
knew that both I and Weena were lost, but I determined to make the Morlocks pay for their
meat. I stood with my back to a tree, swinging the iron bar before me. The whole wood was
full of the stir and cries of them. A minute passed. Their voices seemed to rise to a higher
pitch of excitement, and their movements grew faster. Yet none came within reach. I stood
glaring at the blackness. Then suddenly came hope. What if the Morlocks were afraid? And
close on the heels of that came a strange thing. The darkness seemed to grow luminous.
Very dimly I began to see the Morlocks about me three battered at my feet--and then I
recognized, with incredulous surprise, that the others were running, in an incessant stream,
as it seemed, from behind me, and away through the wood in front. And their backs seemed
no longer white, but reddish. As I stood agape, I saw a little red spark go drifting across a
gap of starlight between the branches, and vanish. And at that I understood the smell of
burning wood, the slumbrous murmur that was growing now into a gusty roar, the red glow,
and the Morlocks' flight.

"Stepping out from behind my tree and looking back, I saw, through the black pillars of the
nearer trees, the flames of the burning forest. It was my first fire coming after me. With
that I looked for Weena, but she was gone. The hissing and crackling behind me, the
explosive thud as each fresh tree burst into flame, left little time for reflection. My iron bar
still gripped, I followed in the Morlocks' path. It was a close race. Once the flames crept
forward so swiftly on my right as I ran that I was outflanked and had to strike off to the left.
But at last I emerged upon a small open space, and as I did so, a Morlock came blundering
towards me, and past me, and went on straight into the fire!

"And now I was to see the most weird and horrible thing, I think, of all that I beheld in that
future age. This whole space was as bright as day with the reflection of the fire. In the
centre was a hillock or tumulus, surmounted by a scorched hawthorn. Beyond this was
another arm of the burning forest, with yellow tongues already writhing from it, completely
encircling the space with a fence of fire. Upon the hill-side were some thirty or forty
Morlocks, dazzled by the light and heat, and blundering hither and thither against each
other in their bewilderment. At first I did not realize their blindness, and struck furiously at
them with my bar, in a frenzy of fear, as they approached me, killing one and crippling
several more. But when I had watched the gestures of one of them groping under the
hawthorn against the red sky, and heard their moans, I was assured of their absolute
helplessness and misery in the glare, and I struck no more of them.

"Yet every now and then one would come straight towards me, setting loose a quivering
horror that made me quick to elude him. At one time the flames died down somewhat, and I
feared the foul creatures would presently be able to see me. I was thinking of beginning the
fight by killing some of them before this should happen; but the fire burst out again
brightly, and I stayed my hand. I walked about the hill among them and avoided them,
looking for some trace of Weena. But Weena was gone.

"At last I sat down on the summit of the hillock, and watched this strange incredible
company of blind things groping to and fro, and making uncanny noises to each other, as
the glare of the fire beat on them. The coiling uprush of smoke streamed across the sky,
and through the rare tatters of that red canopy, remote as though they belonged to another
universe, shone the little stars. Two or three Morlocks came blundering into me, and I drove
them off with blows of my fists, trembling as I did so.

"For the most part of that night I was persuaded it was a nightmare. I bit myself and
screamed in a passionate desire to awake. I beat the ground with my hands, and got up and
sat down again, and wandered here and there, and again sat down. Then I would fall to
rubbing my eyes and calling upon God to let me awake. Thrice I saw Morlocks put their
heads down in a kind of agony and rush into the flames. But, at last, above the subsiding
red of the fire, above the streaming masses of black smoke and the whitening and
blackening tree stumps, and the diminishing numbers of these dim creatures, came the
white light of the day.

"I searched again for traces of Weena, but there were none. It was plain that they had left
her poor little body in the forest. I cannot describe how it relieved me to think that it had
escaped the awful fate to which it seemed destined. As I thought of that, I was almost
moved to begin a massacre of the helpless abominations about me, but I contained myself.
The hillock, as I have said, was a kind of island in the forest. From its summit I could now
make out through a haze of smoke the Palace of Green Porcelain, and from that I could get
my bearings for the White Sphinx. And so, leaving the remnant of these damned souls still
going hither and thither and moaning, as the day grew clearer, I tied some grass about my
feet and limped on across smoking ashes and among black stems, that still pulsated
internally with fire, towards the hiding place of the Time Machine. I walked slowly, for I was
almost exhausted, as well as lame, and I felt the intensest wretchedness for the horrible
death of little Weena. It seemed an overwhelming calamity. Now, in this old familiar room,
it is more like the sorrow of a dream than an actual loss. But that morning it left me
absolutely lonely again--terribly alone. I began to think of this house of mine, of this
fireside, of some of you, and with such thoughts came a longing that was pain.

"But as I walked over the smoking ashes under the bright morning sky, I made a discovery.
In my trouser pocket were still some loose matches. The box must have leaked before it
was lost.

X
"About eight or nine in the morning I came to the same seat of yellow metal from which I
had viewed the world upon the evening of my arrival. I thought of my hasty conclusions
upon that evening and could not refrain from laughing bitterly at my confidence. Here was
the same beautiful scene, the same abundant foliage, the same splendid palaces and
magnificent ruins, the same silver river running between its fertile banks. The gay robes of
the beautiful people moved hither and thither among the trees. Some were bathing in
exactly the place where I had saved Weena, and that suddenly gave me a keen stab of pain.
And like blots upon the landscape rose the cupolas above the ways to the under-world. I
understood now what all the beauty of the over- world people covered. Very pleasant was
their day, as pleasant as the day of the cattle in the field. Like the cattle, they knew of no
enemies and provided against no needs. And their end was the same.

"I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been. It had committed
suicide. It had set itself steadfastly towards comfort and ease, a balanced society with
security and permanency as its watchword, it had attained its hopes to come to this at last.
Once, life and property must have reached almost absolute safety. The rich had been
assured of his wealth and comfort, the toiler assured of his life and work. No doubt in that
perfect world there had been no unemployed problem, no social question left unsolved. And
a great quiet had followed.

"It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for
change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a
perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless.
There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those
animals partake of intelligence that have to meet a huge variety of needs and dangers.

"So, as I see it, the Upper-world man had drifted towards his feeble prettiness, and the
Under-world to mere mechanical industry. But that perfect state had lacked one thing even
for mechanical perfection--absolute permanency. Apparently as time went on, the feeding of
the Under-world, however it was effected, had become disjointed. Mother Necessity, who
had been staved off for a few thousand years, came back again, and she began below. The
Under-world being in contact with machinery, which, however perfect, still needs some little
thought outside habit, had probably retained perforce rather more initiative, if less of every
other human character, than the upper. And when other meat failed them, they turned to
what old habit had hitherto forbidden. So I say I saw it in my last view of the world of Eight
Hundred and Two Thousand Seven Hundred and One. It may be as wrong an explanation as
mortal wit could invent. It is how the thing shaped itself to me, and as that I give it to you.

"After the fatigues, excitements, and terrors of the past days, and in spite of my grief, this
seat and the tranquil view and the warm sunlight were very pleasant. I was very tired and
sleepy, and soon my theorizing passed into dozing. Catching myself at that, I took my own
hint, and spreading myself out upon the turf I had a long and refreshing sleep.

"I awoke a little before sunsetting. I now felt safe against being caught napping by the
Morlocks, and, stretching myself, I came on down the hill towards the White Sphinx. I had
my crowbar in one hand, and the other hand played with the matches in my pocket.

"And now came a most unexpected thing. As I approached the pedestal of the sphinx I
found the bronze valves were open. They had slid down into grooves.

"At that I stopped short before them, hesitating to enter.

"Within was a small apartment, and on a raised place in the corner of this was the Time
Machine. I had the small levers in my pocket. So here, after all my elaborate preparations
for the siege of the White Sphinx, was a meek surrender. I threw my iron bar away, almost
sorry not to use it.

"A sudden thought came into my head as I stooped towards the portal. For once, at least, I
grasped the mental operations of the Morlocks. Suppressing a strong inclination to laugh, I
stepped through the bronze frame and up to the Time Machine. I was surprised to find it
had been carefully oiled and cleaned. I have suspected since that the Morlocks had even
partially taken it to pieces while trying in their dim way to grasp its purpose.

"Now as I stood and examined it, finding a pleasure in the mere touch of the contrivance,
the thing I had expected happened. The bronze panels suddenly slid up and struck the
frame with a clang. I was in the dark--trapped. So the Morlocks thought. At that I chuckled
gleefully.

"I could already hear their murmuring laughter as they came towards me. Very calmly I
tried to strike the match. I had only to fix on the levers and depart then like a ghost. But I
had overlooked one little thing. The matches were of that abominable kind that light only on
the box.

"You may imagine how all my calm vanished. The little brutes were close upon me. One
touched me. I made a sweeping blow in the dark at them with the levers, and began to
scramble into the saddle of the machine. Then came one hand upon me and then another.
Then I had simply to fight against their persistent fingers for my levers, and at the same
time feel for the studs over which these fitted. One, indeed, they almost got away from me.
As it slipped from my hand, I had to butt in the dark with my head--I could hear the
Morlock's skull ring--to recover it. It was a nearer thing than the fight in the forest, I think,
this last scramble.

"But at last the lever was fitted and pulled over. The clinging hands slipped from me. The
darkness presently fell from my eyes. I found myself in the same grey light and tumult I
have already described.

XI

"I have already told you of the sickness and confusion that comes with time travelling. And
this time I was not seated properly in the saddle, but sideways and in an unstable fashion.
For an indefinite time I clung to the machine as it swayed and vibrated, quite unheeding
how I went, and when I brought myself to look at the dials again I was amazed to find
where I had arrived. One dial records days, and another thousands of days, another millions
of days, and another thousands of millions. Now, instead of reversing the levers, I had
pulled them over so as to go forward with them, and when I came to look at these
indicators I found that the thousands hand was sweeping round as fast as the seconds hand
of a watch into futurity.

"As I drove on, a peculiar change crept over the appearance of things. The palpitating
greyness grew darker; then--though I was still travelling with prodigious velocity--the
blinking succession of day and night, which was usually of a slower pace, returned, and
grew more and more marked. This puzzled me very much at first. The alternations of night
and day grew slower and slower, and so did the passage of the sun across the sky, until
they seemed to stretch through centuries. At last a steady twilight brooded over the earth,
a twilight only broken now and then when a comet glared across the darkling sky. The band
of light that had indicated the sun had long since disappeared; for the sun had ceased to
set--it simply rose and fell in the west, and grew ever broader and more red. All trace of the
moon had vanished. The circling of the stars, growing slower and slower, had given place to
creeping points of light. At last, some time before I stopped, the sun, red and very large,
halted motionless upon the horizon, a vast dome glowing with a dull heat, and now and
then suffering a momentary extinction. At one time it had for a little while glowed more
brilliantly again, but it speedily reverted to its sullen red heat. I perceived by this slowing
down of its rising and setting that the work of the tidal drag was done. The earth had come
to rest with one face to the sun, even as in our own time the moon faces the earth. Very
cautiously, for I remembered my former headlong fall, I began to reverse my motion.
Slower and slower went the circling hands until the thousands one seemed motionless and
the daily one was no longer a mere mist upon its scale. Still slower, until the dim outlines of
a desolate beach grew visible.

"I stopped very gently and sat upon the Time Machine, looking round. The sky was no
longer blue. North-eastward it was inky black, and out of the blackness shone brightly and
steadily the pale white stars. Overhead it was a deep Indian red and starless, and south-
eastward it grew brighter to a glowing scarlet where, cut by the horizon, lay the huge hull of
the sun, red and motionless. The rocks about me were of a harsh reddish colour, and all the
trace of life that I could see at first was the intensely green vegetation that covered every
projecting point on their south-eastern face. It was the same rich green that one sees on
forest moss or on the lichen in caves: plants which like these grow in a perpetual twilight.

"The machine was standing on a sloping beach. The sea stretched away to the south-west,
to rise into a sharp bright horizon against the wan sky. There were no breakers and no
waves, for not a breath of wind was stirring. Only a slight oily swell rose and fell like a
gentle breathing, and showed that the eternal sea was still moving and living. And along the
margin where the water sometimes broke was a thick incrustation of salt--pink under the
lurid sky. There was a sense of oppression in my head, and I noticed that I was breathing
very fast. The sensation reminded me of my only experience of mountaineering, and from
that I judged the air to be more rarefied than it is now.

"Far away up the desolate slope I heard a harsh scream, and saw a thing like a huge white
butterfly go slanting and flittering up into the sky and, circling, disappear over some low
hillocks beyond. The sound of its voice was so dismal that I shivered and seated myself
more firmly upon the machine. Looking round me again, I saw that, quite near, what I had
taken to be a reddish mass of rock was moving slowly towards me. Then I saw the thing
was really a monstrous crab-like creature. Can you imagine a crab as large as yonder table,
with its many legs moving slowly and uncertainly, its big claws swaying, its long antennae,
like carters' whips, waving and feeling, and its stalked eyes gleaming at you on either side
of its metallic front? Its back was corrugated and ornamented with ungainly bosses, and a
greenish incrustation blotched it here and there. I could see the many palps of its
complicated mouth flickering and feeling as it moved.

"As I stared at this sinister apparition crawling towards me, I felt a tickling on my cheek as
though a fly had lighted there. I tried to brush it away with my hand, but in a moment it
returned, and almost immediately came another by my ear. I struck at this, and caught
something threadlike. It was drawn swiftly out of my hand. With a frightful qualm, I turned,
and I saw that I had grasped the antenna of another monster crab that stood just behind
me. Its evil eyes were wriggling on their stalks, its mouth was all alive with appetite, and its
vast ungainly claws, smeared with an algal slime, were descending upon me. In a moment
my hand was on the lever, and I had placed a month between myself and these monsters.
But I was still on the same beach, and I saw them distinctly now as soon as I stopped.
Dozens of them seemed to be crawling here and there, in the sombre light, among the
foliated sheets of intense green.

"I cannot convey the sense of abominable desolation that hung over the world. The red
eastern sky, the northward blackness, the salt Dead Sea, the stony beach crawling with
these foul, slow-stirring monsters, the uniform poisonous-looking green of the lichenous
plants, the thin air that hurts one's lungs: all contributed to an appalling effect. I moved on
a hundred years, and there was the same red sun--a little larger, a little duller--the same
dying sea, the same chill air, and the same crowd of earthy crustacea creeping in and out
among the green weed and the red rocks. And in the westward sky, I saw a curved pale line
like a vast new moon.

"So I travelled, stopping ever and again, in great strides of a thousand years or more,
drawn on by the mystery of the earth's fate, watching with a strange fascination the sun
grow larger and duller in the westward sky, and the life of the old earth ebb away. At last,
more than thirty million years hence, the huge red-hot dome of the sun had come to
obscure nearly a tenth part of the darkling heavens. Then I stopped once more, for the
crawling multitude of crabs had disappeared, and the red beach, save for its livid green
liverworts and lichens, seemed lifeless. And now it was flecked with white. A bitter cold
assailed me. Rare white flakes ever and again came eddying down. To the north-eastward,
the glare of snow lay under the starlight of the sable sky and I could see an undulating crest
of hillocks pinkish white. There were fringes of ice along the sea margin, with drifting
masses further out; but the main expanse of that salt ocean, all bloody under the eternal
sunset, was still unfrozen.

"I looked about me to see if any traces of animal life remained. A certain indefinable
apprehension still kept me in the saddle of the machine. But I saw nothing moving, in earth
or sky or sea. The green slime on the rocks alone testified that life was not extinct. A
shallow sandbank had appeared in the sea and the water had receded from the beach. I
fancied I saw some black object flopping about upon this bank, but it became motionless as
I looked at it, and I judged that my eye had been deceived, and that the black object was
merely a rock. The stars in the sky were intensely bright and seemed to me to the transit of
an inner planet passing very near to the earth.

"The darkness grew apace; a cold wind began to blow in freshening gusts from the east,
and the showering white flakes in the air increased in number. From the edge of the sea
came a ripple and whisper. Beyond these lifeless sounds the world was silent. Silent? It
would be hard to convey the stillness of it. All the sounds of man, the bleating of sheep, the
cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that makes the background of our lives all that
was over. As the darkness thickened, the eddying flakes grew more abundant, dancing
before my eyes; and the cold of the air more intense. At last, one by one, swiftly, one after
the other, the white peaks of the distant hills vanished into blackness. The breeze rose to a
moaning wind. I saw the black central shadow of the eclipse sweeping towards me. In
another moment the pale stars alone were visible. All else was rayless obscurity. The sky
was absolutely black.

"A horror of this great darkness came on me. The cold, that smote to my marrow, and the
pain I felt in breathing, overcame me. I shivered, and a deadly nausea seized me. Then like
a red-hot bow in the sky appeared the edge of the sun. I got off the machine to recover
myself. I felt giddy and incapable of facing the return journey. As I stood sick and confused
I saw again the moving thing upon the shoal--there was no mistake now that it was a
moving thing--against the red water of the sea. It was a round thing, the size of a football
perhaps, or, it may be, bigger, and tentacles trailed down from it; it seemed black against
the weltering blood-red water, and it was hopping fitfully about. Then I felt I was fainting.
But a terrible dread of lying helpless in that remote and awful twilight sustained me while I
clambered upon the saddle.

XII

"So I came back. For a long time I must have been insensible upon the machine. The
blinking succession of the days and nights was resumed, the sun got golden again, the sky
blue. I breathed with greater freedom. The fluctuating contours of the land ebbed and
flowed. The hands spun backward upon the dials. At last I saw again the dim shadows of
houses, the evidences of decadent humanity. These, too, changed and passed, and others
came. Presently, when the million dial was at zero, I slackened speed. I began to recognize
our own petty and familiar architecture, the thousands hand ran back to the starting-point,
the night and day flapped slower and slower. Then the old walls of the laboratory came
round me. Very gently, now, I slowed the mechanism down.

"I saw one little thing that seemed odd to me. I think I have told you that when I set out,
before my velocity became very high, Mrs. Watchett had walked across the room, travelling,
as it seemed to me, like a rocket. As I returned, I passed again across that minute when
she traversed the laboratory. But now her every motion appeared to be the exact inversion
of her previous ones. The door at the lower end opened, and she glided quietly up the
laboratory, back foremost, and disappeared behind the door by which she had previously
entered. Just before that I seemed to see Hillyer for a moment; but he passed like a flash.

"Then I stopped the machine, and saw about me again the old familiar laboratory, my tools,
my appliances just as I had left them. I got off the thing very shaky, and sat down upon my
bench. For several minutes I trembled violently. Then I became calmer. Around me was my
old workshop again, exactly as it had been. I might have slept there, and the whole thing
have been a dream.

"And yet, not exactly! The thing had started from the south-east corner of the laboratory. It
had come to rest again in the north-west, against the wall where you saw it. That gives you
the exact distance from my little lawn to the pedestal of the White Sphinx, into which the
Morlocks had carried my machine.

"For a time my brain went stagnant. Presently I got up and came through the passage here,
limping, because my heel was still painful, and feeling sorely begrimed. I saw the Pall Mall
Gazette on the table by the door. I found the date was indeed to-day, and looking at the
timepiece, saw the hour was almost eight o'clock. I heard your voices and the clatter of
plates. I hesitated--I felt so sick and weak. Then I sniffed good wholesome meat, and
opened the door on you. You know the rest. I washed, and dined, and now I am telling you
the story.

"I know," he said, after a pause, "that all this will be absolutely incredible to you. To me the
one incredible thing is that I am here to-night in this old familiar room looking into your
friendly faces and telling you these strange adventures."

He looked at the Medical Man. "No. I cannot expect you to believe it. Take it as a lie--or a
prophecy. Say I dreamed it in the workshop. Consider I have been speculating upon the
destinies of our race until I have hatched this fiction. Treat my assertion of its truth as a
mere stroke of art to enhance its interest. And taking it as a story, what do you think of it?"

He took up his pipe, and began, in his old accustomed manner, to tap with it nervously
upon the bars of the grate. There was a momentary stillness. Then chairs began to creak
and shoes to scrape upon the carpet. I took my eyes off the Time Traveller's face, and
looked round at his audience. They were in the dark, and little spots of colour swam before
them. The Medical Man seemed absorbed in the contemplation of our host. The Editor was
looking hard at the end of his cigar--the sixth. The Journalist fumbled for his watch. The
others, as far as I remember, were motionless.

The Editor stood up with a sigh. "What a pity it is you're not a writer of stories!" he said,
putting his hand on the Time Traveller's shoulder.

"You don't believe it?"

"Well."

"I thought not."

The Time Traveller turned to us. "Where are the matches?" he said. He lit one and spoke
over his pipe, puffing. "To tell you the truth . . . I hardly believe it myself. . . And yet . . ."

His eye fell with a mute inquiry upon the withered white flowers upon the little table. Then
he turned over the hand holding his pipe, and I saw he was looking at some half-healed
scars on his knuckles.

The Medical Man rose, came to the lamp, and examined the flowers. "The gyneaceum's
odd," he said. The Psychologist leant forward to see, holding out his hand for a specimen.

"I'm hanged if it isn't a quarter to one," said the Journalist. "How shall we get home?"

"Plenty of cabs at the station," said the Psychologist.

"It's a curious thing," said the Medical Man; "but I certainly don't know the natural order of
these flowers. May I have them?"

The Time Traveller hesitated. Then suddenly: "Certainly not."

"Where did you really get them?" said the Medical Man.

The Time Traveller put his hand to his head. He spoke like one who was trying to keep hold
of an idea that eluded him. "They were put into my pocket by Weena, when I travelled into
Time." He stared round the room. "I'm damned if it isn't all going. This room and you and
the atmosphere of every day is too much for my memory. Did I ever make a Time Machine,
or a model of a Time Machine? Or is it all only a dream? They say life is a dream, a precious
poor dream at times--but I can't stand another that won't fit. It's madness. And where did
the dream come from? . . . I must look at that machine. If there is one!"

He caught up the lamp swiftly, and carried it, flaring red, through the door into the corridor.
We followed him. There in the flickering light of the lamp was the machine sure enough,
squat, ugly, and askew; a thing of brass, ebony, ivory, and translucent glimmering quartz.
Solid to the touch--for I put out my hand and felt the rail of it--and with brown spots and
smears upon the ivory, and bits of grass and moss upon the lower parts, and one rail bent
awry.

The Time Traveller put the lamp down on the bench, and ran his hand along the damaged
rail. "It's all right now," he said. "The story I told you was true. I'm sorry to have brought
you out here in the cold." He took up the lamp, and, in an absolute silence, we returned to
the smoking-room.

He came into the hall with us and helped the Editor on with his coat. The Medical Man
looked into his face and, with a certain hesitation, told him he was suffering from overwork,
at which he laughed hugely. I remember him standing in the open doorway, bawling good
night.

I shared a cab with the Editor. He thought the tale a "gaudy lie." For my own part I was
unable to come to a conclusion. The story was so fantastic and incredible, the telling so
credible and sober. I lay awake most of the night thinking about it. I determined to go next
day and see the Time Traveller again. I was told he was in the laboratory, and being on
easy terms in the house, I went up to him. The laboratory, however, was empty. I stared
for a minute at the Time Machine and put out my hand and touched the lever. At that the
squat substantial-looking mass swayed like a bough shaken by the wind. Its instability
startled me extremely, and I had a queer reminiscence of the childish days when I used to
be forbidden to meddle. I came back through the corridor. The Time Traveller met me in the
smoking-room. He was coming from the house. He had a small camera under one arm and
a knapsack under the other. He laughed when he saw me, and gave me an elbow to shake.
"I'm frightfully busy," said he, "with that thing in there."

"But is it not some hoax?" I said. "Do you really travel through time?"

"Really and truly I do." And he looked frankly into my eyes. He hesitated. His eye wandered
about the room. "I only want half an hour," he said. "I know why you came, and it's awfully
good of you. There's some magazines here. If you'll stop to lunch I'll prove you this time
travelling up to the hilt, specimen and all. If you'll forgive my leaving you now?"

I consented, hardly comprehending then the full import of his words, and he nodded and
went on down the corridor. I heard the door of the laboratory slam, seated myself in a
chair, and took up a daily paper. What was he going to do before lunch-time? Then
suddenly I was reminded by an advertisement that I had promised to meet Richardson, the
publisher, at two. I looked at my watch, and saw that I could barely save that engagement.
I got up and went down the passage to tell the Time Traveller.

As I took hold of the handle of the door I heard an exclamation, oddly truncated at the end,
and a click and a thud. A gust of air whirled round me as I opened the door, and from within
came the sound of broken glass falling on the floor. The Time Traveller was not there. I
seemed to see a ghostly, indistinct figure sitting in a whirling mass of black and brass for a
moment--a figure so transparent that the bench behind with its sheets of drawings was
absolutely distinct; but this phantasm vanished as I rubbed my eyes. The Time Machine had
gone. Save for a subsiding stir of dust, the further end of the laboratory was empty. A pane
of the skylight had, apparently, just been blown in.

I felt an unreasonable amazement. I knew that something strange had happened, and for
the moment could not distinguish what the strange thing might be. As I stood staring, the
door into the garden opened, and the man-servant appeared.

We looked at each other. Then ideas began to come. "Has Mr. _____ gone out that way?"
said I.

"No, sir. No one has come out this way. I was expecting to find him here."

At that I understood. At the risk of disappointing Richardson I stayed on, waiting for the
Time Traveller; waiting for the second, perhaps still stranger story, and the specimens and
photographs he would bring with him. But I am beginning now to fear that I must wait a
lifetime. The Time Traveller vanished three years ago. And, as everybody knows now, he
has never returned.

Epilogue

One cannot choose but wonder. Will he ever return? It may be that he swept back into the
past, and fell among the blood-drinking, hairy savages of the Age of Unpolished Stone; into
the abysses of the Cretaceous Sea; or among the grotesque saurians, the huge reptilian
brutes of the Jurassic times. He may even now, if I may use the phrase, be wandering on
some plesiosaurus-haunted Oolitic coral reef, or beside the lonely saline lakes of the Triassic
Age. Or did he go forward, into one of the nearer ages, in which men are still men, but with
the riddles of our own time answered and its wearisome problems solved? Into the
manhood of the race: for I, for my own part cannot think that these latter days of weak
experiment, fragmentary theory, and mutual discord are indeed man's culminating time! I
say, for my own part. He, I know--for the question had been discussed among us long
before the Time Machine was made--thought but cheerlessly of the Advancement of
Mankind, and saw in the growing pile of civilisation only a foolish heaping that must
inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end. If that is so, it remains for us to
live as though it were not so. But to me the future is still black and blank--is a vast
ignorance, lit at a few casual places by the memory of his story. And I have by me, for my
comfort, two strange white flowers shrivelled now, and brown and flat and brittle to witness
that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived
on in the heart of man.
THE END